A fire broke out just before 3 p.m. Wednesday atop the massive Grainger Industrial Supply distribution center in south Louisville, scorching a section of the building’s rooftop solar panel installation. No injuries have been reported, and officials have not determined how the fire may have started.
The blaze struck the 8700 block of Minor Lane, near Okolona between the Outer Loop and I-265, according to WLKY, which reported the fire. The station reported that 12 chunks of the solar panel installation were left scorched on top of the nearly 1.5-million-square-foot building. WLKY said it would update the story as more information becomes available.
The timing is notable: just weeks before Wednesday’s fire, dGEN Energy Partners and Grainger had finished installing a 6.426-megawatt rooftop solar system atop the Minor Lane facility, made up of roughly 11,900 panels and 17 inverters. Per El Kentubano, the system was engineered to generate about 8.5 million kilowatt-hours annually, enough to supply 92 percent of the facility’s power needs.
A Newly Finished Clean Energy Project
The Minor Lane project includes a 6.426-megawatt rooftop solar installation. The available project description does not characterize it as part of a broader corporate sustainability effort or compare it with Grainger’s prior solar footprint. It also does not provide figures for Grainger’s broader rooftop-solar capacity or 2020 clean-energy generation…