What’s Hot on Campuses This Year: Solar Power
Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education, 12 June 2008
http://chronicle.com/blogs/architecture/2191/
the-hottest-thing-on-campuses-this-year-solar-power
Across the Sun Belt, colleges and universities are gearing up to tap into solar power as a way to reduce their carbon emissions and make themselves greener. Several campuses have unveiled plans recently to put up large solar-power installations that will generate significant portions of their electricity.
When Florida Gov. Charlie Crist signed a $66-billion budget Wednesday, he provided $8.5-million to Florida Gulf Coast University for the construction of a 2-megawatt solar-power installation that will provide 100 percent of the campus’s electricity needs.
Arizona State University reported this week that it signed a contract with companies to build two megawatts of solar electric modules on rooftops in Tempe. That project, slated to be finished in December, will provide 7 percent of the energy for the Tempe campus, according to the university. Arizona State will not pay directly for the installation. Instead, it has signed a 15-year contract to purchase electricity at a set rate.
Earlier this spring, the Los Angeles Community College District started a 1.2-megawatt project at East Los Angeles College, which will produce 45 percent of the energy used by the college.
Irvine
The University of California at Irvine is getting into the solar game through a 20-year contract with UPC Solar in Chicago to install at 1.2-megawatt system on 11 campus buildings. And the university’s San Diego campus announced in April a contract to put up a 1-megawatt solar array this year on campus buildings, to be followed next year by a similarly sized project.
Not to be outdone, Contra Costa Community College District is planning a 3.2-megawatt solar-power system through a contract with Chevron Corporation. This year the college installed 2.65 megawatts of the system.
With so many campuses racing into the game, it’s hard to keep track of the leaders. Arizona State’s press release claims that its system “will be the largest deployment of solar-power infrastructure by any U.S. university,” but Chevron boasts that its project at Contra Costa is “the largest solar-power installation ever constructed for an institution of higher learning in North America.” —Richard Monastersky