900 solar panels generate power at former UNC airport

The former Horace Williams Airport at UNC is now home to the University's first ground-mounted solar field. The system contains bifacial panels that tilt to maximize solar energy generation.

The solar energy generated at this site in its first 12 weeks of operation was more than the solar energy generated in an entire year by all other campus solar installations combined.

Photo credits:
Image 1. Folder 0182. Airport (Horace Williams): Plans, 1950: Scan. In the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill Image Collection Collection #P0004, North
Carolina Collection Photographic Archives, The Wilson Library,
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.


Photo 1. Women with WWII era plane. From “Students Will Try Aerial Acrobatics in Lightweight Army Trainers Soon.” March 9, 1941. The Daily Tar Heel, p. 2. https://newspapers.digitalnc.org/lccn...


Photo 2. Pennant, U.S. Navy Pre-Flight School, 1940s. Lew Powell Collection.
The Louis Round Wilson Special Collections Library. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.


Photo 3. Sheet Film 0045: Raleigh Airport: Annapolis visitors, 25 September 1942: Scan 01 in the United States Navy Pre-Flight School University of North Carolina) Photographic Collection #P0027, North Carolina Collection Photographic Archives, The Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.


Photo 4. University gazette [2008 : October 29, v.33 : no.18] - North Carolina Digital Collections. (2019). Ncdcr.gov. https://digital.ncdcr.gov/Documents/D...


Photo 5. Celebrating five decades in the air | UNC-Chapel Hill. (2018, June 22). The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. https://www.unc.edu/discover/celebrat...


Photo 6. University gazette [2018 : May 16, v.43 : no.9] - North Carolina Digital Collections. (2018). Ncdcr.gov. https://digital.ncdcr.gov/Documents/D...


Photo 7. Cleared for landing | UNC-Chapel Hill. (2020, May 16). The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. https://www.unc.edu/discover/horace-w...