Many urban centers contain large areas of toxic or unproductive land. These are called brownfiels and are usually the result of some factory that use to be located at that site but has long been torn down. Abandoned gas stations are smaller scale examples of brownfield. Some cities (Chicago, Cleveland, Philly) have quite large areas of brownfield. One advantage of a brownfield is that a grid connection is already there (since a factory used to be there). So why not turn this brownfields into electricity production sites using PV arrays? This process has been dubbed brightfields .

One successful example of this is shown below for Chicago:

The Urban Brownfield Array (chicago)- 33000 panels @50 Watts panel 1.6 MW which powers about 1000 houses.

Following is a gallery of some large scale urban brownfields where similar projects could happen:

Seattle - Gasworks - 19 acres



Camden NJ - 25 Acres



Philadelphia

Small scale



Large Scale



Eugene