The world's largest solar energy facility has opened here. It will provide Princess Noura Bint Abdulrahman University with warm water, the firms responsible said Friday. The facility, built by Austrian firms GREENoneTEC and AEE Intec, consists of 36,000 square meters (387,500 square feet) of solar panels and cost €3.6 million ($4.7 million). After a six-month trial period that began in late 2011, the facility became operational this week, its makers said. Almost twice as large as the biggest solar thermal facility so far, in Denmark, the new system also uses special material and structures to withstand sandstorms. Princess Noura Bint Abdulrahman University has many a first to its names. It is the first women's university in Saudi Arabia and largest women-only university in the world, comprising 32 campuses across the Riyadh region and a new library capable of holding 4.5 million volumes. The large campus and community have their own unique transport system. The world's largest Automated People Mover (APM) train system is at the university. APM railway total length is 14 km having the rush hour capacity of 7000 passengers/hour. It has 33 trains each having maximum capacity up to 224 passengers and maximum speed of 60 km/h. Thirty-eight of its buildings, totaling a million square meters, have applied for a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building rating. The campus operates a monorail shuttle and electric vehicles, and solar panels power 18 percent of its air conditioning.
