A sold-out event at the Intuit Dome in Inglewood, California, seats nearly 18,000 people. The Los Angeles Clippers and headlining musical acts regularly play within its walls, and even if the grid goes down, the dome can keep the show going. That’s because it’s powered by a solar microgrid.
Solar PV installed on Intuit Dome’s curved roof and two neighboring parking garages produces 2.5 MW of power paired with 12 MWh of energy storage. In a grid outage, the system can power the arena for two-and-a-half hours just from stored energy.
“I’ve done stadiums, big convention centers, a lot of unique things,” said Scott Williams, executive VP of Baker Electric, which installed the project. “We pride ourselves on taking on the hard jobs, and this was definitely a hard job.”
Live from Inglewood
The solar project atop the Intuit Dome required a specialized combination of racking and mounting components to attach to its roof. AECOM
Intuit Dome officially opened its doors to the public in August 2024, just in time for the next NBA season. As its name suggests, the all-electric, LEED Platinum-certified arena has a rounded exterior covered in gridshell. On the rooftop, the Intuit Dome logo is prominently framed by clusters of solar modules in the shape of a nautilus shell. That rooftop array is accompanied by solar carports on the south garage where coaches and players park and another separate parking deck.
Baker Electric, an employee-owned electrical and solar contractor based in Escondido, was hired for the Intuit Dome array after the first installer exited the project. Baker had spent several years on the original public bid for the solar + storage project, and was one of three remaining companies vying for the contract, but initially wasn’t selected for the job. Development carried on in the interim, so when Baker returned to the project, it was working on a shorted timeline.
This first-of-its-kind microgrid meant there weren’t exactly examples of other sports arena solar + storage setups to model from.
“You don’t have any load data. You don’t know what their economics are truly going to look like,” said Nick Jackson, senior director of commercial solar at Baker Electric. “You’re working with a bunch of assumptions and hypothetical analyses and not necessarily hard 15-minute green button data from years of usage — of the customer knowing exactly their energy costs.”
Baker collaborated with the project’s architects, electrical engineers and mechanical teams to size a system that would fit the Intuit Dome’s energy footprint. Then it was a matter of building the array.
“It’s a very complicated project. There was really no solution for the array on top of the dome, because it’s a curved surface,” Williams said.
Baker had to find racking that could hold flat solar modules in place along a curved roof — a roof that is between a 20 to 30° slope at its edge, which posed additional safety considerations for the worksite. Forty-five days after being contracted, the company custom-fabricated an attachment that would work for the roof when paired with IronRidge racking.
Baker Electric installed 2.5 MW of solar at the newly-built Intuit Dome. Paired with energy storage, this arena has its own microgrid. Baker Electric
Solar installers were just one of many tradespeople working on this new-build arena. Once the rooftop array layout was finalized, ironworkers started laying metal plates and Baker followed with solar racking. Baker electricians placed more than 3,000 posts along the under-construction Intuit Dome roof, which were then encapsulated in foam and covered in roof membrane. The posts had to work where they were placed, because they weren’t moving after that.
“I don’t feel … people really understand [the difficulty of] trying to apply vertical posts on a curved surface that’s changing, basically two stories of elevation, across that entire dome,” Williams said. “When you do it with something flat, that’s a lot easier.”
Modules were assembled into tables at ground level and hoisted more than 200 ft to the top of the dome. The array is composed of LG 440-W solar panels, SMA Sunny Tripower Core 1 string inverters and three Tesla Megapack 2XLs for energy storage. Baker subcontracted Teichert Solar to manufacture and install carports on the adjoining parking decks.
Building a legacy of sustainability
The same posts keeping the solar modules in place on the Intuit Dome are also holding up its sky-facing logo. When the sun sets, the lights beneath the sign illuminate the roof and the PV surrounding it.
“In the construction industry, we build a lot of nondescript properties that get used by a select few and appreciated by none,” Jackson said. “But whenever there’s an opportunity to build a stadium or an arena or anything where the general public has an engagement with it on a regular basis, it’s on TV, it’s in the news, you now get to put your name on that for the entire life of that property.”
Since completing the project, Williams said Baker has been fielding inquiries from other sports teams about bringing solar to their stadiums. He also regularly watches the Clippers play at the Intuit Dome under the stadium lights his team helped power.
“Personally, it’s definitely an iconic project of my career that I’ll always talk about,” he said.
