Middlebury to Add Solar Farm
Sophomores Camille Seyler, left, Ali Rotatori, Olivia French and Spencer Petterson in front of the future solar farm site. Independent photo/Trent Campbell
Ever wondered why Middlebury has yet to add a solar farm to our neutrality plan? Well, wonder no more!
The Addison Independent reported today that Middlebury College will be installing a solar farm off Route 125 in the open space between BiHall and the Organic Garden. According the Independent, the installation, slated for February, will consist of 34 photovoltaic solar power collectors.
The college has long been considering a solar farm to help meet the school’s goal of carbon neutrality by 2016, according to Jack Byrne, director of sustainability integration at Middlebury. But it wasn’t until four students in Professor John Isham’s environmental economics class — Spencer Petterson, Camille Seylor, Olivia French and Alexandra Rotatori — conducted a cost-benefit analysis that college administrators were fully convinced to go ahead with the project.
This environmental economics class seems to be having quite the impact, bringing us Less Meat Mondays earlier in the semester and now a solar farm! Who knows what will be next!
The Solar Farm, to be metered against Battell, “is expected to generate 200,000 kW-hours (kWh) of electricity per year.” Just how big is this impact? Enough to theoretically ‘offset’ Battell dormitory, a dorm used year-round for first-years and student worker summer housing, which uses approx. 190,000 KW-hours (kWh) of electricity annually.
So blast that music, use those laptops, and know it will be just a bit more green.
This article has been corrected on Tuesday, January 17. The solar farm will not be directly metered against Battell. Thank you to C in the comments for pointing out the error.
major props to john isham for actually DOING somethings with his class instead of merely assigning them dry environmental policy readings like some other professors would have. middlebury professors should be thinking this way all the time.
Please do NOT defeat the purpose of this exciting work by following this advice: “So blast that music, use those laptops, and know it will be just a bit more green.” Energy conservation is still hugely important even with greener energy being used on campus!
Also, for clarification, the solar farm will not be “metered against Battell.” The dorm was given as a reference for people to have a sense of how much power would be coming from the new solar farm.
W — I absolutely agree! Students I’ve met in his classes have nothing but praise for him, it’s easy to see why!
C — I regret if you think I was trying to encourage people to use more energy, or use it wastefully by saying to “blast music and use laptops.” The fact of the matter is, those are two things that college students will do, both for entertainment and academic purposes — so I think it’s great the energy is coming from a greener source! That being said, it is of course important to conserve energy by being mindful of how often you are engaging in said activities and devices, turning them off and unplugging them when you are done, shutting off lights, line-drying laundry and so forth. I do not mean to endorse wasteful energy use by any means.
Regarding the metering against Battell, I will correct that above, thank you for the clarification!