Solar City
The sun gods smile down on Central de Abasto
In a city defined by superlatives, it is no surprise that Mexico City’s main wholesale market is the largest of its kind in the world. The Central de Abasto is Mexico City’s primary vegetable, fruit, and meat market. The market itself occupies about 210 acres in the neighborhood of Iztapalapa, along the eastern border of Mexico City. The market hosts about 300,000 people per day - mostly conducting business between market wholesalers and their retail clients, but with a mix of direct to consumer retail as well.
But this is not about what happens inside the Central de Abasto, but rather what is happening on top of it. Mexico City has just completed a massive project to install over 32,000 photovoltaic modules on the market’s rooftops - making it the largest rooftop solar plant in the world. The ambitious project was begun during the administration of Claudia Sheinbaum, former mayor of Mexico City and now presidential candidate (see here, here and here for more about Claudia Sheinbaum).
According to Ciudad Solar - an initiative of Mexico City’s government to build more solar infrastructure - the Central de Abasto solar project consists of 220,000 square meters - about 54 acres - of solar panels, which will generate about 25 gigawatt hours of electricity per year. The vast majority of that electrical output will be used to power the market itself, and will save 13,550 tons of CO2 emissions per year.
The Central de Abasto solar plant is being managed and operated by the Comisión Federal de Electricidad(CFE) - yes, the same people who make you stand around in their offices for 7 hours if you need to talk to someone about your electricity bill. Let’s hope that the people running this new plant weren’t pulled from the ranks of customer service 🌞.
Wow, that's impressive! Made me laugh when you mentioned CFE and customer service. On those horrible days if one has to see someone in person, there's usually only one customer service representative. Along w/ the teaming masses. But the woman who's there has superlative patience. They must have given her some sort of Kuder preference test to for patience and EQ or something.
Others have said impressive, and I being late to the party, will say.... hmmm... okay, I'll go with impressive.
Wow, what a project. I've never been to the Central de Abasto, but markets are fun. All the stuff plus food and usually dogs running around. Next time I'm down that way, I'll have to check it out. Good on the update, Mike! Go Sheinbaum.