University of Denver installs solar panels on campus

The panels are on 18 of the 88 roofs on campus and will provide as much as 8% of the university’s total energy needs.

Dec. 15, 2020

2 min read

The University of Denver has completed installation of solar panels on 18 of the 88 roofs on campus.

The solar panels will produce 3 million kilowatts of energy a year and be responsible for as much as 8% of the university’s total energy needs.

The university says in a news release that solar panel installation began in May 2019 and was completed this year. The energy harnessed by each panel feeds directly into the buildings, with a small extra boost from two “solar trees” — decorative panel displays positioned outside the Ritchie School of Engineering and Computer Science and, in the coming weeks, the Shwayder Art Building.

Along with the panels, the universty will get access to energy data through dashboards reporting information from each building.

“We’ve added new smart meters at each of the buildings that has solar, so for the first time we are getting fairly real-time data at 15-minute intervals,” says Chad King, executive director of sustainability. “We get data about how much solar is being produced and how much electricity the whole building is utilizing. That allows us to get a much better idea of the energy profile of the buildings and [to] better project what other improvements and behavioral changes could do.”

The university has made other strides toward sustainability and carbon neutrality. For the last two years, it has surpassed its goal of reducing carbon emissions by 24%. It changed out light bulbs for LED alternatives, reduced heating and cooling through smarter occupancy settings, and educated the community. In 2018, these efforts reduced the university’s carbon footprint by 38%.

“We knew that in order to get to our carbon neutrality goal that we would have to, at some point, have renewables either on campus or off,” King says. “We also knew from the beginning that we wanted to be authentic in how we did renewables. We didn’t want to just buy carbon offsets or do some sort of tricky deal where we buy solar and then sell the offsets and buy cheaper offsets. We wanted to be transparent.”

Video from the University of Denver: