Dow Jones & Company, the American publishing and business information firm that publishes the Wall Street Journal and Barron’s financial magazine, is looking to add sunshine to its vast portfolio by building one of the largest solar arrays on a single commercial site in the U.S.

Dow Jones is thinking big and innovative with the new solar installation on the company’s Brunswick, N.J., corporate office by building elevated solar panels above parking spaces in the corporate parking lot.

The solar carport field, which will be composed of 13,000 solar panels, is being built on 230,000 square feet of parking space on the Dow Jones’s Bernard Kilgore campus and will serve to not only provide power but to also provide shade for parked cars.

The solar carports will provide five million kilowatt hours per year and will supply enough power to support the international company’s global servers and computers, or 15 percent of the company’s total power usage. Construction is set to be complete on the carport array, which is part of a larger project that includes a 555-kilowatt rooftop installation, in April 2011. Upon completion, the project as a whole will generate 4.1 megawatts of solar power.

“Solar power is a renewable reminder that clean energy is possible and that responsible businesses can make it happen,” said Howard Hoffman, vice president of corporate affairs for Dow Jones Company. “Dow Jones is committed to environmental responsibility and wants to be one of the companies making a difference.”

Dow Jones & Company chose SunPower Corporation to build the New Jersey solar installation with its T5 Solar Roof Tile, a rooftop panel that combines a high-efficiency SunPower panel, frame, and mounting system into a pre-engineered unit that doesn’t require penetration of the existing roof. Financed partially through Public Service Gas & Electric Company’s Solar Loan Program, the panels will make Dow Jones & Company one of the largest commercial solar generators in the country.

SunPower Corporation is headquartered in California with regional corporate offices in New Jersey and Hawaii. The company works in the residential, business and government, and utility sectors of the solar industry.

Image courtesy of Dow Jones & Company.