At the end of February, USF St. Petersburg will be considered for a $500,000 grant from Duke Energy to install an array of solar panels on campus.
This is the third year that USFSP will participate in the SunSense competition among Florida’s colleges, universities and technical schools, and the last year Duke is offering the grant.
According to USFSP’s sustainability coordinator Jennifer Winter, this time USFSP is ready to win.
“We were really close last year. I’ve been working really hard to make sure we have everything right this time,” Winter said.
Last year, USFSP came in second, losing the grant to St. Petersburg College. When Duke Energy officials came to campus for an on-site inspection, the biggest problems they cited were USFSP had no sustainability coordinator and no way to monitor the energy usage for major buildings.
Since then, Winter’s position was created, and she is close to coming to an agreement with administration to install an energy dashboard — an online system that would allow anyone on campus to access the energy use and water consumption for major buildings. The University Student Center, the Student Learning Center, Residence Hall One and the Science and Technology Building would all be monitored.
The original estimate for such a system was high # around $400,000.
On Friday, Feb. 7, Winter and a group of about 25 people that included students, faculty and administration met with a representative from Trane, a company that builds the systems, to discuss installation. At the meeting, the group determined that the scope of the project would have to be adjusted somewhat to bring down the price, but otherwise the reaction was positive.
Winter said that the important thing to remember is that the monitoring system will pay for itself in time and provide a lot of educational benefits. She recently met with professors Yogi Goswami and Elias Stefanakos at the USF Tampa Clean Energy Research Center to discuss how to improve the argument for the dashboard.
“Their sustainability master’s program would be able to do research using our dashboard,” Winter said.
At USFSP, the College of Education, the department of science education and multiple professors have submitted letters of intent stating they support the project and will incorporate the solar panels into their curriculum.
Winter and the group of students working with her, including Daniel McGarigal, Lauren Reilly and James Scott, are also trying to get the city involved. Council member Karl Nurse has offered his support for the dashboard and solar panel installation.
“The city is looking to us to be a leader, a microcosm of sustainability,” Winter said.
The proposed site for the solar panels is on top of the parking garage, in the form of a carport. According to McGarigal, director of sustainable initiatives for Student Government, the parking garage is the perfect place for the solar panels.
“There are policies in place that don’t allow us to put solar on our rooftops. But it works out because the parking garage is the largest square-foot building on campus,” McGarigal said.
This would also move the parking garage closer to becoming a certified green building. Energy-efficient, motion-sensing LED lights were recently installed on one floor, and there are plans to do the same for the rest.
Applications for the SunSense grant are due Feb. 28, and the top candidates will be announced on March 28. The winning school will be selected in July after on-site inspections, and then the solar panels will be installed in the fall.
For McGarigal, the appeal of the panels is obvious.
“We’re in Florida, and we’re significantly underusing solar power,” he said.
If USFSP wins the grant, it will host the largest and most efficient solar array in St. Petersburg. Currently, the largest array is at the net zero energy office building at 1950 Central Ave., which houses Big Sea Design and Development, Roundhouse Creative and the Sierra Club.
If you’re interested in becoming involved with sustainable initiatives at USFSP, contact Jennifer Winter at jsw1@mail.usf.edu.
