Saint-Charles
The world's largest building-integrated power plant
The first Sunstyle® solar roof was launched in 2011 at the Saint-Charles international market in Perpignan, southern France, a European leader in fruit and vegetable sales, transport and logistics. The roof sparked such enthusiasm that it was used to upgrade the entire surface area (68,000 m², or 97,000 solar tiles) of the roof of the Perpignan warehouses. With an output of 8.8 MW, when it opened it was the world’s largest building-incorporated solar plant.
The power supply required to cool the warehouses and preserve the fruit and vegetables is today entirely offset by the electricity generated by the plant, a genuine ecological revolution for the Saint-Charles market made possible by cooperation between more than 50 co-owners united around this project.
An exceptional project
For this major project, work had to be undertaken in constant consultation with all of the Saint-Charles market’s stakeholders in order to minimize its impact on the site’s day-to-day commercial activities. A major operation to remove asbestos from the buildings was also carried out during the project, in close collaboration with the Caisse Régionale d’Assurance Maladie (regional health insurance body) and the Labor Inspectorate teams.
A very different exceptional event: during the Saint-Charles construction phase, one of the largest snowstorms ever recorded in the region occurred in March 2010, a real-life test demonstrating the resistance of Sunstyle® solar tiles to extreme weather conditions!
