Mayfair Plaza Shopping Center in Cary is offering something different: a solar energy power plant.
The retail center hosts one of the state's largest solar farms, all of it installed on the roof of a Food Lion grocery store.
The solar farm generates 250 kilowatts of power, enough to meet the energy needs of 22 typical homes. The facility began generating power last month.
Progress Energy, a utility based in Raleigh, buys the electricity and distributes it over its power grid in the Carolinas.
FLS Energy, based in Asheville, owns and operates the power plant.
A solar farm of the same size will begin generating electricity for Progress this spring at the North Hills Shopping Center in Raleigh.
These shopping center solar farms aren't the state's biggest. That honor goes to a Progress complex near Wilmington that generates about five times more electricity from sunshine.
John Murawski has been a full-time newspaper reporter since 1991, with stints at Legal Times and The Chronicle of Philanthropy (both in Washington, DC), The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Palm Beach Post (in South Florida) before arriving at the N&O in December 2004. At the N&O he covers energy (nuclear, coal, renewable, efficiency), utilities (electric, natural gas, telephone) and telecommunications. His beat includes such publicly traded companies as Progress Energy, Duke Energy, PSNC Energy, Piedmont Natural Gas, PowerSecure International, Tekelec, Cisco Systems, AT&T, among others. You can reach him at 919-829-8932 or 
