U Richmond Offsets 100% of Electricity with Solar
- By Dian Schaffhauser
- 02/11/21
A Virginia
institution is the latest school to cover all of its electricity
needs with a more sustainable source. The University
of Richmond (UR) has joined campuses in Colorado,
Hawaii
and Minnesota
to match 100 percent of its electricity usage with solar power.
A solar array dubbed
"Spider Solar" has 47,000 panels generating 41,000 megawatt
hours of solar energy annually. Rather than using that power
directly, the university uses Spider Solar to replenish the electric
grid to offset its own campus usage.
Source: AES
The solar field
began operating on Dec. 31, 2020, generating the equivalent of the
electricity usage of 5,000 homes.
"The university
pledged in 2015 to accelerate its transition to low-carbon energy
while enhancing sustainable and resilient practices across our
campus," said Director of Sustainability, Rob Andrejewski, in a
statement. "With Spider Solar now online, UR's greenhouse gas
emissions will be 57 percent below where they were in 2009, putting
us in a great position to aim for carbon neutrality."
Spider Solar is
located in Spotsylvania County, about 60 miles away from the
university. It was built and is operated by sPower,
owned by AES.
The university maintains a purchase power agreement, in which the
company manages the day-to-day operations of the array, and the
institution agrees to pay a fixed price for the energy produced.
This arrangement,
said Mark Detterick, the university's senior associate vice president
of campus operations, makes the school "directly responsible for
introducing more renewable energy onto the grid, while being able to
better predict the university's utility expenses, all without the
costs associated with owning or operating a large solar facility."
Spider Solar is UR's
second power purchase agreement. The university constructed its first
solar
array in 2016 under a state pilot program. That
project involved the installation of 749 solar panels on the campus'
Center for Recreation and Wellness.
About the Author
Dian Schaffhauser is a former senior contributing editor for 1105 Media's education publications THE Journal, Campus Technology and Spaces4Learning.