Southgate Solar, a partnership between Samsung Renewable Energy; Conor, Clark and Lunn; and Carbon Free is a 60 megawatt, utility scale, ground-mount solar facility. It sits atop varying topography and geotechnical conditions so extreme they presented some of the most difficult design and constructability challenges in North American solar projects.

Accepting the challenge, our project team developed a dead-man anchor foundation, a type of ground anchor, to counteract the site’s clean beach sand and glacial till. Not only did this expedite the economical construction of 22,000 foundations, it ensured the successful delivery of the project to meet the client’s project pro forma.

Southgate Solar embraces all opportunities for the community and client. It’s built on grazing land, where sheep keep the grass trim and help reduce client maintenance costs.

To further enhance profitability for the client, our modular construction division prefabricated the operations and maintenance building at its off-site manufacturing facility and self-performed all building foundations within the solar array. The roof was also modularized and sent to the site in sections to ease installation.