Bentley Harnesses The Power Of The Sun With The UK’s Largest Solar Parking Lot

Bentley, like most automakers, is getting serious about electric power. Not just for its automobiles, but for its manufacturing facilities, too.

The British automaker has announced plans to install 10,000 new solar panels at its headquarters in Crewe. The array will cover the employee parking lot at the factory, and will be the largest in the UK. The lot has space for 1,378 vehicles, covering an area of 16,426 square meters. That’s over four acres, or about the size of three American football fields.

The project will take six months to complete. Once it’s done, it will add 2.7 megawatts of clean energy to the facility’s power grid. What’s more is that these won’t be the first solar panels installed at the site. Bentley installed over twice as many – 20,815 solar panels – at its factory in a project that wrapped up in 2013. The new phase will increase that figure by nearly 50 percent, and give it enough solar electricity to power 1,750 homes.

“We continue to focus on new initiatives that reinforce our commitment to the environment, whether this is introducing alternative powertrain technologies in future models, or our award-winning work to reduce the environmental impact of our factory,” said Bentley manufacturing chief Peter Bosch. “This solar installation is another example of how we can make our factory more sustainable by using technological innovation.”

Bentley claims its place as the first British automaker to be certified by the Carbon Trust Standards for environmental friendliness. The automaker recently revealed the Bentayga Hybrid as its first electrified vehicle, borrowing its plug-in hybrid powertrain from sister-company Porsche. And there’ll be more to follow. At the same time, though, it remains one of the largest manufacturers of twelve-cylinder engines, and still produces the positively Jurassic 6.75-liter twin-turbo V8 for the Mulsanne.