Commercial, Solar  -  January 3, 2020

Netflix's new headquarters to feature facade solar panels

Netflix’s newest headquarters as of late spring 2020 will be located in the first commercial building in Los Angeles to implement solar-generated technology into a building’s facade.

The office building, designed by Gensler and developed by Hudson Pacific Properties, will feature solar panels built into the building envelope and will include 13 stories of office space., North American Clean Energy reported Jan. 2. By using the facade of the building, named EPIC, the developers freed up space on the rooftop for amenity use.

“Here in California, we get a lot of solar exposure on the south side,” Chris Barton, executive vice president of development and capital investments for Hudson Pacific Properties, told North American Clean Energy. “So the entire south side of the building has solar panels integrated into the façade. Unfortunately, the west side is shadowed by an adjacent building, so putting solar there wasn’t effective. But we also put it into the east side of the building, because it gets a decent amount of sun.”

Crystalline solar panels were hung vertically and connected by electrical conduit and wire that carries the electricity to individual electrical rooms, North American Clean Energy reported. Unused energy then gets fed back into the grid.

This innovative structure will also feature 25,000 square feet of communal outdoor space, a landing pad and mailroom for drones and electric vehicle charging stations. The building also will save an additional 15% of energy use beyond California’s new building requirements through the use of lighting controls and energy-efficient plumbing fixtures.

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