PermaCity A division of Catalyze
Since 2003, PermaCity works with public facilities, real estate Portfolio owners, and business owners to convert unused roof assets into revenue while contributing to a sustainable climate, reduced heat island, and elimination of local air pollution. PermaCity provides project funding from a dedicated $250M solar fund for FiT, PPA, ESA, and Leasing. PermaCity is the largest commercial solar developer and installer in Los Angeles with more than 150 MWs installed and operating on more than 14 million square feet of commercial roofs, including Westmont Industrial Complex, the largest solar roof in the World at 16.4 MWs, the L.A. Convention Center, Fox Studios, and many others. Affiliate PermaCity Skybride is a Veteran focused Union construction company specializing in DC solar roofs deploying PermaCity’s patented SolarStrap manufactured in Los Angeles.
Company details
Find locations served, office locations
- Business Type:
- Manufacturer
- Industry Type:
- Solar Energy
- Market Focus:
- Globally (various continents)
About Us
PermaCity is a leading solar energy design and installation company who shares your belief that sustainable non-polluting energy is the only way to secure the future for our environment and our well-being. We are focused on providing you with the opportunity to realize the dream of going solar. Our passion and work are a big win for the environment and offer great financial returns for our customers. Our patented and patent pending innovations provide best of class projects, winning design awards.
About Jonathan Port
Surfing the longest wave in the world in a remote location in Peru or retrofitting corporate America to be green and save millions of dollars is how leading green entrepreneur Jonathan Port has rolled through life. Jonathan calls himself a Sustainable Designer and Planner on a mission to accelerate the pace of transformation into a sustainable planet. Like his water sports, it takes practice, dedication, and discipline to drop into the wave of retrofitting world leading companies.
Both of his passions are extremely technical and pushing the technical limits safely brings huge paybacks to all parties involved. This is why in 2003 he founded PermaCity Corporation, headquartered in Los Angeles, California, the place where he was born. The Company name comes from his graduate thesis completed in 1993 and since that time it has been an exciting ride. The PermaCity Theory actually economically modeled a hypothetical sustainable city and the results showed a surplus economy. His knowledge and experience in the big picture coupled with a natural engineering ability saves companies millions of dollars. Its all about saving money, saving waste, saving energy, and saving the planet from an overheated culture centered around excessive fossil fuel and water use. Solve these two problems in a positive way and the children of tomorrow have a chance: reverse global warming and ocean acidification.
Most of PermaCity customers enjoy five years or less paybacks but thanks to great engineering and product selection many have 30-50 year design life. And that’s just it, his projects and ability to design make his customers wealthier while rolling back their heavy foot print on the Earths threatened ecology. He has ten issued U.S. patents, five around SolarStrap, that is the core of PermaCity’s unique value with its own ICC Test Criteria and Number (own building code) considered a game changer for the solar industry and other issued patents addressing the future of solar technology.
Mr. Port holds a Master’s Degree in Urban Planning and Sustainable Development from Auckland University in New Zealand and a Bachelor of Science degree in City and Regional Planning from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.
Our Team
Since our inception in 2003, PermaCity has maintained steady growth through our commitment to excellence and customer satisfaction. Our company is made up of technical personnel with leading experience in the solar energy industry. Our staff of electrical, mechanical, automation and controls engineers enable us to offer clients expanded engineering services for more complex projects. Because of the depth of our capabilities, we can offer premier turnkey project delivery.
Our Growth
PermaCity is an innovative leader in specialized energy solutions. Since our inception, we’ve remained 100% committed to solar innovations and execution. Our growth is based on a long, successful track record with multiple big-box stores and industrial projects as well as the strong relationships we have forged with clients. Because we’re solar specialists, we understand exactly how to strategically develop and seamlessly execute solar installation projects that deliver ROI for your business.
Our Projects
Our projects are known for system longevity, high performance, and architectural aesthetics. We achieve this through the faithful application of our unique management and implementation systems that combine safety, quality and performance into your solar solution. Our approach to executing solar allows us to offer best-of-class results, including highest value-for-money spent for our customers.
Our Passion
Solar Perspective
PermaCity is a leading solar energy design and installation company who shares your belief that sustainable non-polluting energy is the only way to secure the future for our environment and our well-being. We are focused on providing you with the opportunity to realize the dream of going solar. Our passion and work are a big win for the environment and offer great financial returns for our customers. Our patented and patent pending innovations provide best of class projects, winning design awards.
All things start simple and move to changing our quality of life. The auto started as a motorized horseless carriage and now has trillions of dollars in infrastructure. Solar started as simple power to offset building use but will ultimately power everything, including vehicles.
Our children will live in a Los Angeles were 60 percent of our power comes from solar generated locally, and the remainder off site solar, wind and hydro. Our power use will increase as vehicles move to electric. Boundaries on electric vehicles will cease to exist.
Electric vehicle guide ways offer three dimensional personal, semi-public, and public transportation moving at fast speeds and high safety. Travel from Century City to Sherman Oaks will take ten minutes and not deplete any electric from the vehicle. As the infrastructure grows, travel from Los Angeles to San Francisco in your personal electric vehicle will take only two and one half hour with a full electric range in your vehicle still available. Vehicles will charge and discharge from the guide way with out touching it using magnetic induction charging technology that will be standard in all vehicles.
Along with the new mode of transportation delivers to our utility company the ability to modulate our grid. For the LADWP this is presently about a $2B or the $5B in annual electric revenues, but this will grow. LADWP will no longer be consumed with generation but with managing grid resources using their control of the grid, hydro-electric resources and other on-demand peaking technologies, and by charging and discharging the millions of electric vehicles operating in the City. Think about it, every electric vehicle stores enough power for most homes making it the ideal storage device. When you blend the electric vehicle with the electric vehicle guide way the real benefits of a solar powered city are realized.
Awards & Patents
PermaCity focuses on delivering practical technologies used in our award winning projects. Our utility patents such a SolarStrap cover breakthrough technologies for installing solar on roofs without penetrations or ballast. Our design patents deliver unique elegant methods for integrating solar into buildings and parking lots.
Awards
Los Angeles Architectural Awards 2011 Cathay Bank Headquarters (478 kW DC, El Monte, CA)
The project is a solar power system which was composed of four identical solar carport structures in the Cathay Bank headquarters building parking lot. The carport provides shade for parked cars, as well as power for the entire building. The project is also aesthetically pleasing because of added fascia, hidden conduit, underground junction boxes and other components that typically give solar carports a more industrial appearance.
Certificates
LOS ANGELES GREEN BUSINESS
PermaCity is certified as a Green Business by the City of LA Green Business. This recognition signifies that we are conducting our business using strategies aimed at improving employee wellness and productivity, energy savings, water efficiency, resource stewardship and reducing CO2 emissions. This seal shows our commitment to incorporating sustainable practices at every level of our operations as we continue striving to reduce our impact on the environment through sustainable practices and source reduction initiatives. We take pride in being part of the growing green business community of Los Angeles as well as the California Green Business Network.