UMd. Unveils New Solar Panels

A new array of 2,632 solar panels atop a university-owned building is a part of a grander effort to make positive changes for future generations, according to University of Maryland President Wallace Loh.

“We will have an impact on generations that are unforeseen,” Loh said at a press event to unveil the solar panels on the roof of the Severn Building on Wednesday.

The building is located on Greenbelt Road, within the College Park boundaries. Mayor Andrew Fellows welcomed the project as part of a shared mission by the city and the university to become more energy efficient.

“We want to continue our work with the university and the county to make this the greenest county in the country,” Fellows said at the event.

The panels will produce 792-megawatt hours of electricity each year, the equivalent of powering 872 houses a month, project leaders said.

It’s also equivalent to taking 79 cars off the road, and avoiding 408 tons of CO2 emissions, Malcolm Woolf, director of the Maryland Energy Administration (MEA) said.

The panels were partially funded by a $630,000 grant from the MEA with monies from the federal Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The university’s current energy supplier, Washington Gas Energy Services, Inc. paid for the remainder of the project. The energy produced will be sold to the university through a 20-year contract at a pre-established price that gradually increases over the years, WGES president Harry Warren told Patch.

He said this is a win-win for both parties: The university purchases clean energy for cheaper than it’s paying for conventional energy, and it reduces risk for WGES.

“We know how much power we’ll put out, and how much we’ll get paid for it,” Warren said.

The panels will produce only a fraction of the energy needed to operate the Severn Building, a former Washington Post printing plant. The university purchased the building in 2010 and is currently renovating it as a facility for management and other uses.

Warren said solar energy systems typically provide about 30 percent of the entire power demand of the facility.

“We are in the early days of solar power,” he said. “I think that certainly we have a long way to go.”