The Buffalo News: Swarms of workers turning SolarCity into complex panel factory
Published:
Saturday, January 30, 2016 - 15:14
The Buffalo News
The parking lot already is packed outside the SolarCity factory in South Buffalo, months before the solar systems company makes its first solar panel.
The vehicles are from the more than 850 workers constructing the $900 million factory that the state is building and equipping for SolarCity – the centerpiece project in Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s Buffalo Billion economic development initiative.
Outside, the gold hue windows, along with a splash of blue color on a white exterior, gives the building the color scheme that one of the factory’s key backers, the SUNY Polytechnic Institute, favors.
Inside the 1.2 million-square foot-factory – the size of 10 Home Depot stores – on a recent January afternoon, the beeping from dozens of lift trucks created an off-key symphony as workers installed a spider web of duct work, piping and wiring that is supported by a lattice of overhead steel beams running the length of the factory.
