The University of Wisconsin-Superior’s solar array is finally up and running. The array was hooked up to the main power substation and fully turned one, marking April 21 as the end to the long wait. Although the project is officially complete, plans continue with campus involvement and sharing with the community.
There were a few bumps in the road to get the array running, one of the biggest
challenges was obtaining specific parts that were essential to bring it online. Mark Graves, the facilities director at UWS, spoke about the smaller size of the project compared to other arrays and how that stopped them from getting parts sooner. “450-kW seems like a big array, but in the grand scheme of solar arrays, we’re really, really small. So, we’re competing for those same parts, like everybody else, and in the grand scheme of things, I think we kind of got put on the back burner compared to those much bigger, like megawatt, and bigger king of solar arrays,” Graves said.
Originally the array was planned to be a nine-month long project that turned into a twoyear long project in total. Graves stated that it’s a huge relief to finally be finished and looks forward to sharing the data of the array’s efficacy with the community.
The intentions of sharing with the community don’t stop there. Depending on different
departments and clubs on campus, Mark Graves believes there is value in getting students involved in different aspects of the array. Whether it be sustainability, tracking their energy consumption and reporting it to the student base, or biology, students introducing animal life and plant life into the controlled fenced in area to see how different habitats work in that area.
Having certain
plant life inside the array can help with maintenance as well. “Something low growth, you know, something that we can kind of set it and forget it, not have to mow because if we’re consuming fossil fuels to mow it, it kind of screws up the whole point of having a solar array,” Graves said.
The array is estimated to produce roughly 5% to 15% of the campus total power, which
can save around $40,000 to $50,000 on energy savings. This would lead to a full payback of the project in about 11 years. The array’s energy production, as well as the campus energy consumption, is planned to be shared on a digital dashboard with live feedback on the information
