Solar Panel Array Brings Alternative Energy to Campus

Alternative energy made an appearance at Fairmont State University and Pierpont Community & Technical College on Friday.

Asolar panel array was installed next to the library on the shared campus.

The solar panels are a result of a $10,000 grant from the Dominion Foundation. The FSU College of Science and Technology applied for a grant with the help of Dr. Don Trisel, dean of the college; Dr. Erica Harvey, a chemistry professor at FSU; andAmantha Cole, Title III project director for FSU. The grant was awarded in October of 2015, Trisel said.

“We are thankful for this funding opportunity from the Dominion Foundation and for their ongoing support of Fairmont State,” Amy Baker, director of marketing and branding for FSU, said about the grant.

The grant was awarded to benefit the SolarArmy, a group exploring more efficient ways to harvest solar energy. It was also awarded to install solar panels on campus, Trisel said.

The College of Science and Technology wanted to install solar panels on campus “to create more awareness for alternative energies on campus,” Trisel said.

There has recently been unrest in the coal and oil and gas industry, he said.

“Sunshine is free,” Trisel said. “I don’t want to see other industries get put out of work, but I think we need to diversify to protect ourselves.”

If solar energy were expanded, the displaced workers from the coal and oil and gas industry could be retrained to work in the solar industry,! he said.

The Dominion Foundation is not the only organization that helped get the solar panels installed on campus.

Mountain View Solar from Berkeley Springs installed the solar panels. Mountain View Solar is aWest Virginia company, and the solar panels that were installed were made in the United States, Trisel said.

The total cost of the solar panel project was $21,000. The grant from the Dominion Foundation provided $7,500 of that money and the College of Science and Technology contributed $7,500. Mountain View Solar installed the solar panels for free and included some extra solar panels for free, helping to make the installation larger, Trisel said.

The solar panels are located on a hill next to the library in a very visible! spot so that people will see them and start thinking about alternative energy, Trisel said.

The solar panel array was turned on Friday. It is connected to the grid. While the solar panels do not generate enough electricity to power the whole library, the library still gets to immediately use the energy that is produced by the solar panels, Trisel said.

The solar panels require little maintenance. They just occasionally need to be cleaned and have snow removed from them. They are guaranteed to be working at 80 percent of their original capacity after 25 years. They are supposed to last for a total of 40 years, he said.

While the project did cost a total of $21,000, the solar panels will have generated enough energy to pay for themselves in eight years, he said.

Right now Trisel is working on getting the solar p! anels set up to provide data about their energy production. He hopes to have that done by the end of this week, he said.

He will put the data on the College of Science and Technology’s Facebook page. He also plans in the future to have a TV monitor put in the third-floor lobby of the Science and Engineering Building that will periodically show the data fromthe solar panels.

“I’m excited to see the data we’ll collect,” Trisel said.

Students can use the data for projects. Students can also use the solar panels for future projects. The architecture and the electronics engineering technology professors have already expressed interest in their students doing projects using the solar panels, Trisel said.

Trisel would love to see the project expand, to see solar panels insta! lled on the roofs of buildings on campus, he said.

Alumni and community members that would like to donate to help expand the project are welcome to., he said.

“The outreach is probably the most valuable part of all this,” Trisel said. “We want this solar panel array to be educational and to get people thinking about alternative energies.”

This story by Michelle Dillon originally appeared on page 1A of the Times West Virginian on Aug. 4, 2016 and is posted here with permission. Contact Dillon at mdillon@ timeswv.com.

College of Science and TechnologyDr. Don TriselDominion Foundationsolar panels