The building of the city, where consumption of the energy will be fully provided by solar energy, started in southwest Florida. Implementation of the Babcock ranch project is planned for twenty-five years. The new eco-city is about the size of Manhattan and will accommodate 19 500 houses and 560 thousand square feet of retail space. The population of Babcock ranch will be 50,000 people.
One of the nation’s largest installations of solar home panels, including an area of 160 hectares and a capacity of seventy-five megawatts will provide electricity. The realization of the project of the home solar power system with a total cost of $300 million started in October, in order to connect it to the power grid till the end of the year.
The company Kitson & Partners is engaged in the development of the territory. However, only the fifth part is planned for building. There will be “active” houses that will produce more energy than needed. The project also involves a system of integrated management of water resources, access points of high speed Internet, short time rental of bikes and cars, which, of course, will work with the help of electricity. The first stage of building, which includes the construction of 1,100 homes, is scheduled to be finished by next year. It also became known that from the beginning of 2017 in San Francisco, all new buildings up to 10 floors should be equipped with solar panels or thermal collectors. In turn, France has launched a campaign to install batteries directly onto the surface of the roadway.