New Florida City To Produce Its Own Power, Have Self-Driving Buses
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MIAMI (CBSMiami) -- The city of the future may not have cold metal domes but instead be in the warm Sunshine state.
It's the perfect place to have a solar energy field with about 343,000 panels - enough to power the whole city.
This new city of the future, actually now, is called Babcock Ranch and it will rely 100 percent on solar energy, according to CBS4 News Partner the Miami Herald.
The community of 19,500 homes will be surrounded by thousands of acres of green space and will be completely capable of producing its own energy with a solar panel field that's the size of about 200 football fields.
Developer Syd Kitson, who used to play with the Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys, said his city has the world's biggest photovoltaic solar energy generation field.
It's the first totally ecological, self-sustaining city in the U.S. and has an integrated smart network that helps residents monitor and control the amount of electricity they consume.
Even the public transportation has a mind of its own.
Self-driving electrical buses are already making test runs in the center of the city which is about equal to the size of Manhattan.
But it has raised questions such as how it can avoid depending on traditional methods of generating electricity.
"I've been asked if I got hit on the head too many times when I played football," Kitson said in an interview with BBC World.
He insists it is a realistic and profitable idea.
Residents have already started to move this month to homes in the area which is about a three-hour drive from Miami.
Babcock Ranch is eventually expected to have about 50,000 residents.
