Solar energy could come to the University of Idaho campus as soon as next spring, provided a fundraising initiative goal is met.
A student-led UI Sustainability Center team is working in collaboration with UI Facilities Services on a plan to install nearly 400 solar panels on the roof of the Integrated Research and Innovation Center (IRIC) Building.
The panels will be constructed in an array system — a grid-like structure which holds the panels — supplying the building with 145 kW of energy, Sustainability Center Director Jeannie Matheison said. This will provide 15% of this energy-intensive building’s annual demand, with close to 100% of its overall demand to be met during the summer months, Matheison said.
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Kylie Cutler — Sustainability Center Program Manager and third-year civil engineering student — is one of the co-leads for this project.
“This solar array is the way that I personally, as well as everybody on campus and everybody in the community, can contribute to a large-scale solution to the climate crisis,” Cutler said. “It’s a step that needs to be taken everywhere, and to have it starting here on a smaller scale and then eventually building it up, it’s just a great way to, as an individual, contribute to a large-scale solution in a meaningful and tangible way.”
The IRIC was chosen for this project from a list of 15 potential rooftop and ground-mount locations due to its structural integrity, beneficial orientation to the sun and other criteria.
“We conducted the solar site assessment and found four locations that fit these criteria the way we wanted them to,” Cutler said.
The first choice was the VandalStore roof, which was ruled out after structural analysis revealed it’s not built for current snow loads, said Cutler. The IRIC was the second choice, so Cutler and her team selected its rooftop.
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The project is estimated to cost $365,000 in total, Matheison said. Roughly 56% of this cost has already been raised by the Sustainability Center in partnership with UI Facilities and ASUI.
Stakeholders from the Sustainability Center and Facilities contributed roughly $180,000 and student fees contributed roughly $25,000.
A student activity fee of $1.75 was recently awarded by ASUI to the Sustainability Center — the equivalent of $25,000 a year. Student activity fees come out of student tuition increases which are approved and are allocated to campus projects at ASUI discretion.
Project managers have turned to crowdfunding efforts to raise the remaining 44%.
Matheison said the solar initiative was, in part, inspired by a sustainability plan the administration set for itself. The UI Climate Action Plan, ratified in 2010, outlines options the university may employ to reach its goal of “climate neutrality by 2030.” Part of the plan is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through transitions to alternative energy, as two-thirds of the university’s current greenhouse gas emissions come from electricity generation, Matheison said.
The plan outlines three renewable energy source options, one of which is solar energy. Solar energy was not considered the most viable option in 2010 when the plan was created, as large-scale solar projects did not have the technological capacity to be cost-effective at the time.
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Matheison said solar research has now progressed enough to make such investments cost-effective, especially considering the rising cost of electricity. Trends show electricity prices are increasing by 5%, per year — the equivalent of millions of dollars, she said.
“When you purchase a solar array, it’s like buying your energy in bulk for the next 30 years or longer at a fixed price,” Matheison said. “There are tremendous cost savings associated with that.”
Over its lifetime, this system will save the university an estimated $462,000 and eliminate over four million pounds of CO2 emissions, Matheison said.
The system will also serve as an educational tool, providing data and a real-world solar energy classroom to university students and researchers. Matheison said the team plans to install a data screen in the IRIC, displaying the building’s energy demand side-by-side the solar array’s energy production in real time. Students and faculty would have access to that data for grant proposals and curriculum usage.
Construction on the array is set to begin as soon as next semester, provided the Sustainability Center reaches its remaining funding goal of $160,000. If this goal is not met in the next couple of months, the center will make a decision about whether it wants to move forward to install the solar array in two phases or continue fundraising to install it all at once on a later date, Matheison said.
The center is currently accepting donations to the project via U&I Give, an online crowdfunding platform designed for UI projects. Donations of $166 support the purchase of one solar panel, however donors may contribute to the project on any level.
“Every dollar that we spend installing this array will be paid back to the university, through energy generation, and then after that we receive energy free for many years,” Matheison said. “There is the potential for this array to be one node on a micro grid that the university is establishing.”
Ellen Dennis can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @edennis37