Headquartered in West Kelowna, British Columbia, Okanagan Solar has worked on residential and business projects across Western and Northwestern Canada, and in Nicaragua, where they’ve been active in volunteer work that promotes solar power as a potent economic and cultural solution.

One of Okanagan’s larger home town projects involved a multiple buildings at apartment community Carrington View. Okanagan was contracted for the last three buildings in the residential building project. The three buildings had to provide 277 kW. The Okanagan team elected to use APsystems 3-Phase YC1000 microinverters for additional efficiency and simplicity of installation. The YC1000 units helped the company bring the project in on time and on budget.

After Okanagan completed the work in mid-2020, Carrington View was graced with the distinction of having the biggest collection of residential solar installations in the Province. The aggregate services all 474 apartments and condominiums, and stands as proof positive that solar is both economically and ecologically advantageous.

Learn more about other 2020 project winners here.

One of the most galvanizing 2020 APsystems project entries arrived courtesy of The Next Solar Energy Technology, and it took the APsystems honors for commercial winner in 2020. With an astonishingly prescient sense of timing, the Kenner, Louisiana-based solar power company transformed a solar array into a symbol of restored freedom in the Deep South.

Next Solar Energy was contacted by Liberty Self Storage, a multi-site business in Louisiana, about taking on the conversion project for one of their locations. Liberty Self Storage had dedicated itself to green energy in 2016, commissioning solar conversion for the first 9 of their 12 stores in St. Tammany Parish, but wanted to do something different for this location.

Next Solar Energy’s design arranged the solar panel array into an American flag. In trading string inverters for 64 APsystems microinverters in the project design, they created one of the most energy-efficient locations in the Liberty chain, and helped Liberty take the prize as one of the most progressive mid-sized companies in the South.

Learn more about other 2020 project winners here.

Alternative energy refueling stations are multiplying across North America and Europe. In a way, each is a symbol of ecological relevance in and of itself.

But eco-relevance is good business sense, and it’s now emerging at traditional gas stations, too. Last autumn, as Wawa, Inc. pledged to double the number Tesla Supercharger installations in their network of stores, they also pledged to make 93 of their stations in New Jersey solar powered businesses.

This representative Wawa store in Toms River, New Jersey, is the winner of APsystems’ 2019 Commercial Award for integrating solar power into the context of day-to-day trade and transaction. This gasoline island uses 90 APsystems QS1 micro-inverters for its array of 360 modules in SolareAmerica’s installation, delivering the 108 kilowatts that provide power for a significant portion of the business.

The decision of Wawa, Inc. to take this considerable step toward decreasing their corporate carbon footprint makes each of these 93 stations a symbol of broad-spectrum acceptance of alternative energy. Their decision to use talented and capable solar installers SolareAmerica for these projects is also a brilliant move. We congratulate them for their forward-thinking business acumen.

In the past five years, residential solar has found mainstream acceptance; developers of alternative energy-based communities are blossoming, and driving solar energy into a vibrant new phase as 2020 begins. The Walk—a residential community on Bainbridge Island, in Washington State—is a case study that deftly illustrates this trend, and its outlook as we enter this new decade.

The inverter installations designed for the townhomes of The Walk are the work of Washington State’s Cascadia Solar, a division of Frederickson Electric that develops custom solar energy solutions for homes and businesses in the greater Olympic Peninsula region. The firm used APsystems’ QS1 and YC600 micro-inverters for the project, installing them discreetly on roofs, awnings and vertical end-walls.

We congratulate Cascadia Solar on their inventive design sensibilities, and for their role in establishing mass residential solar—and the first Living Building Zero Energy registered community—on Bainbridge Island.