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The Post Ranch Inn is Saving the World With Solar Panels

Where: Highway 1 [map], Big Sur, CA, United States, 93920

We've given the Post Ranch Inn at Big Sur some big love in the past, and now we've got one more reason to rave: solar panels.

The Post Ranch Inn has long had green initiatives in place, but with their new solar panel installation they're taking things to a new level. They've just switched on a 990-panel solar array to grab that great Californian sunshine and turn it into electricity — enough electricity to produce 400,000 kWh of energy a year and reduce their carbon emissions by the equivalent of taking 50 cars out of action.

Guests at the Post Ranch have apparently been intrigued by the solar panels during the construction phase, and anyone on the property can access info about the program in the hotel library, which includes a monitoring station showing what's happening with the energy at any moment. If you can't afford the not-so-cheap room rates ($655 is a starting point) then you can check their online solar energy monitor to see real-time updates of the system's performance — and (the coolest part) the energy-savings comparisons in terms of cars off the road, square meters of forest preserved and metric tons of carbon emissions avoided.