The Georgia Power Company Corporate Headquarters is a 24-storey

Storey

A storey or story is any level part of a building that could be used by people...

, 91 m (298.6 ft) skyscraper in downtown Atlanta, Georgia

Atlanta, Georgia

Atlanta is the capital and most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia. According to the 2010 census, Atlanta's population is 420,003. Atlanta is the cultural and economic center of the Atlanta metropolitan area, which is home to 5,268,860 people and is the ninth largest metropolitan area in...

 serving Georgia Power

Georgia Power

Georgia Power is an electric utility headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. It is the largest of the four electric utilities that are owned and operated by Southern Company....

, a subsidiary of Southern Company

Southern Company

Southern Company is a public utility holding company of primarily electric utilities in the southern United States. It is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia with executive offices also located in Birmingham, Alabama. The company is currently the 16th largest utility company in the world and the...

. The prior Georgia Power headquarters building was in downtown Atlanta at the corner of Alabama and Forsyth streets in the former Atlanta Constitution Building

Atlanta Constitution Building

The Atlanta Constitution Building, also known as the Georgia Power Atlanta Division Building, is located at the northwest corner of Alabama and Forsyth Streets in downtown Atlanta, Georgia, at 143 Alabama Street, SW...

.

Passive solar design

Completed in 1981 the building utilises 4,500 tons (4,000 metric tons) of structural steel

Steel

Steel is an alloy that consists mostly of iron and has a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most common alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used, such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten...

, and its floors have a passive solar design, with each floor on the south-facing side extending 15 in (38.1 cm) beyond the one below. In summer, when the sun is high in the sky, each extension partially shades the windows below; in winter, when the sun is lower in the southern sky, it shines directly into the windows to assist with space heating. Because of this incremental increase in floor size from the ground to the roof on the southern facade, the building is sometimes referred to as the "Leaning Tower of Power".

Solar thermal project

When the building opened, it featured an experimental solar thermal project on the south plaza [see "Further reading" below], which was dismantled after a few years due to maintenance costs and scarcity and expense of replacement parts. The solar project on the south plaza of the Georgia Power Company headquarters building in the early 1980s consisted of 1,482 parabolic trough (line focus) concentrating collectors with a total surface area of 23,712 sq ft (2,202.9 m2). Each glass-lined collector had a length of 8 ft (2.4 m) and an aperture of 2 ft (0.61 m). Pressurized water from a 6000-gallon storage tank under the plaza was cycled through the tubes in the collectors and heated to about 300°F for use in the building's heating and absorption air conditioning systems.