50% of the power for Sutter-Auburn Faith Hospital in Sacramento California will be coming from solar soon. Set to be completed at the beginning of next year, this project will involve retrofitting a stretch of nearby parking lot to include 3500 solar panels.

The idea is that solar power will provide a cheaper, more environmental friendly means of keeping the lights on. Fortunately, they are going to keep standard generators on standby incase a cloudy day cuts them off from the grid.

I know, I know, not everyone has a huge stretch of land to transform into a battery but still this is a great first step towards giving people (more) practical ways of applying alternative energy sources. Now wouldn’t it be clever if a few more large organizations opted into a program like this.

While the space limitations keeps a single entity from generation enough power to sustain itself, if multiple organization existed on the same “grid” (the way traditional power companies work) we might see a big difference in the way we view energy.