They're putting the sun to work at Applied Materials on Highway 290 in Northeast Austin.
U.S. Rep Lloyd Doggett and Austin city council member Lee Leffingwell flipped the switch on Austin's largest business solar array on Monday.
Applied's President and CEO issued the company a challenge to reduce its environmental impact by 50,000 tons of carbon equivalents by 2012.
The solar panels will eliminate 54,390 pounds of CO2 emissions, the equivalent of planting eight acres of trees. The array will generate more than 33,769 kilowatt-hours (33.7 megawatt-hours) pollution-free energy every year.
The solar arrays generate 20 kilowatts an hour. Leaders hope the project will encourage other businesses to go solar.
"It tells companies - as we've tried to do by extending the solar energy tax credit - that this is dependable. That it will be there. It's not a fluke. This is a serious business enterprise. People can profit from our ability to offer new technologies to try and conserve energy and to avoid the dangers of climate change," Doggett said.
Doggett has spoken before of his support of the bill that would offset 30 percent of the cost of any installation for solar panels as an incentive to switch to renewable energy.
It took only five minutes for the solar panels to begin generating energy. That power was then added to the electrical grid.
