The Walt Disney World in Orlando, USA is probably one of the happiest places on Earth. Children and even grown-ups come from all over the world to enjoy the beautiful world of Mickey Mouse and his companions. Although Disney has released so many characters over the years, Mickey remains its iconic character since he was the first one to be created by the genius of Walt Disney himself. Mickey’s iconic place in the Disney world has been further cemented by installing a solar power plant for the giant theme park in the shape of old’ mickey’s face.
Duke Energy and Reedy Creek Improvement District (RCID) were actively involved in the installation of the Mickey-shaped solar farm in the Walt Disney World. On April 12th of this year, all the three stakeholders of the project were present when the project’s considerable power was switched on. All of this amazing work was completed by the Duke Energy in under a year and it is nice to see it go green especially in the shape of Mickey Mouse.
The total peak production of the solar farm is 5 MW and consists of 48,000 solar panels spread over 22 acres. It can provide power to more than 820 homes but most of it will be used by the entertainment park itself along with a few hotels. Epcot, the operating company of Disney World, has made the singular largest investment in its entire history to realise the dream of this project. The company had tried to implement smaller solar energy platforms but that weren’t enough to cater for the needs of the huge park. They also wanted to reduce the resort’s carbon footprint in the atmosphere by more than 50 percent by 2020. Now the company is closing in on the target and more than 34 percent of the footprint has already been reduced. Apart from going solar, the company is also operating the trains on a mixture of biodiesel and sourced from waste cooking oil. Amazing, isn’t it?
Duke Energy now wants to take solar power to the next level by installing big power plants for universities, schools, state buildings and many other power-hungry installations. Here is a short video on the project: