A Mickey Mouse-shaped solar farm

Fig. 1: An aerial view of the Mickey Mouse-shaped solar farm

Fig. 2: An Energy3D model of the Mickey Mouse-shaped solar farm

If I didn't tell you that this is an actual solar farm near the Epcot Theme Park in the Disney World in Orlando, Florida, you probably would think this is some kind of school project done by kids. But no, this 22-acre 5 MW project was designed and installed by Duke Energy and it has been powering Disney World's facilities since 2016 (Figure 1 is an image from Disney.com). So this is some kind of serious business and has drawn a lot of media attention. The solar farm is so new that even the latest version of Google Maps in May 2017 still does not show it (it is available through Google Maps API that we are using, though).

By shaping the beloved Mickey Mouse character with tens of thousands of solar panels, Disney World has delivered a strong message to the world that the company is committed to a sustainable future.

Fig. 3: A solar radiation heat map representation (June 22).

But who says that kids should not do this? Perhaps they couldn't do it because of the lack of appropriate support and tool. Not any more. Thanks to the support from the National Science Foundation, our powerful Energy3D software and our Solarize Your World curriculum can probably turn every wild imagination in solar power into virtual reality, particularly for children who may need more inquiry- and design-based activities that connect so deeply to their world and their future. Figure 2 shows a model of the Mickey Mouse-shaped solar farm in Energy3D and Figure 3 shows a heat map representation of the solar radiation onto the solar panel arrays.