In order to line up more with Arizona State University’s goals of being carbon neutral on campus by 2025, the New American University has teamed up with start-up company, Strategic Solar, and has opened up two more PowerParasols on campus.
Morgan R. Olsen, executive vice president, treasurer and CFO at ASU, said that these projects are extremely helpful and important to ASU’s goal of being carbon neutral and a leader of universities in cutting the impact that these institutions have on the environment.
ASU’s partnership with Strategic Solar began when they first built one of the PowerParasols, which have photovoltaic solar panels and supplies great shade for the community, at Lot 59, a popular tailgating spot for Sun Devil fans. Now, two more of these structures were built, one PowerParasol was erected outside of ASU’s Memorial Union and the other was built at a major entrance onto campus at Gammage Auditorium.
“The PowerParasols created an area we can enjoy 12 months out of the year,” Olsen said. They also generate sustainable energy for the campus and add to the 25 megawatts of solar energy that ASU hosts across four campuses, Olsen said.
Since 2007, ASU has cut its green house emissions by 36 percent per student, while enrollment has increased by 33 percent, Olsen said. “We’re growing and we’ve achieved these great metrics,” Olsen said.
The PowerParasol at Memorial Union has 1,380 photovoltaic solar panels, which produce 397 kilowatts, and the PowerParasol at Gammage is a little larger with 1,716 panels on two different structures and it produces 494 kilowatts.
These structures aren’t only great at supplying shade during the day, but at night they have luminous lights that create a beautiful friendly environment.
JA Solar supplied all of the panels that were used for these projects. APS community Relations Manager Michelle Gettinger congratulated ASU and PowerParasol with this brand new innovative and green structure.
Bob Boscamp, president of Strategic Solar, said that ASU was the first to partner and share the vision of installing PowerParasols. The PowerParasols are patent pending Boscamp said and he hopes to open up more at ASU and across the nation.
Olsen said that this is one of many of ASU’s projects that are being done to help minimalize the impact that Universities have on the environment. Zero waste initiatives have been enacted, across the campus there are multiple recycling bins for students to utilize and whenever the school receives boxes from shipments ASU sends them back.
Also, at the recent Pat’s Run, ASU had crews making sure what was recyclable at the event was recycled and anything that was organic trash went to proper biomass facilities Olsen said.
