It was Earth Day yesterday, and organizations across the region are taking advantage of the holiday to flip the switch on power-producing solar arrays this week. Ozarks at Large's Jack Travis attended a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the University of Arkansas’ project and brings us this report.
The University of Arkansas flipped the switch on its system-wide solar energy project yesterday. The first of four solar arrays deploying across the state came online, and this one benefits the Fayetteville campus. Although the group of panels on Wedington Drive is the smallest of the four, they still have a huge impact on one part of the university.
"This facility here is offsetting 100% of the electricity consumed at the Cato Springs Research Center."
Eric Boles is the director of sustainability for the university. He oversees off-site energy production and says he spends a lot of time convening stakeholders, talking about how to reduce their environmental footprint through the electricity that facilities consume.
"That was kind of our role within this project. The UA Fayetteville campus had the first solar projects within the U of A system, and that planted the seed that grew into a system-wide project, which is hugely beneficial to all the campuses within the University of Arkansas system and for the state of Arkansas."
The seed was planted in 2019 and resulted in a new solar services agreement in 2022. In that agreement, the Board of Trustees pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 8.8% and pursue a solar array to cover roughly 6.3% of the Fayetteville campus's energy requirement. Senior advisor and project manager for utility operations, Scott Turley, says that growing the agreement to cover the statewide university system allowed for easier approval.
"We were successful in getting one project approved by the board, and that was when they started thinking, should we look at this as a system-wide project as opposed to a campus by campus?"
Now, the solar project has grown to over 20 planned facilities stationed across Arkansas. Yesterday, the first came online in Fayetteville, but later this year, three more will activate around Paris, Nashville and Murfreesboro. The first phase will generate about 993,000 kilowatt-hours of energy a year. That's enough to power 125 homes, possibly saving the university over $100 million over the next 25 years.
This initiative will put the U of A on the map for sustainable energy, as it's the fourth largest university solar deployment in the U.S. Only Stanford, the University of California System and Penn State have larger installations. However, officials at yesterday's ribbon-cutting ceremony say that ours is more complicated.
The power plant works under old net metering laws. These laws allow the university to exchange electricity on the grid, so the Cato Springs Research Center is currently benefiting from the solar panels, even though they're across town. These net metering laws in Arkansas changed a couple of years ago, but Boles says it would be difficult to use the new system without them.
"We're 15, 20 minutes away by car. Kind of how it works is through the net metering laws in the state of Arkansas, we are grandfathered in under the previous net metering laws, which allow us to — for every unit of electricity we put into the grid here, we get one unit of electricity out of the grid at our Cato Springs Research Center. A lot of times these projects make sense to do as a net metering system because you're able to really deploy solar at scale. This whole project is hundreds of acres. It's more land than we have on the campus. And in addition, sometimes it makes sense to build the facilities where the land is available. You have a lower cost to deploy the facility and you have a demand for electricity at that location."
Turley, amidst the panels and the audible whine of solar power generation, says the new solar project is great for the university's many priorities and stakeholders. For starters, it's just good business sense.
“It saves the university money and that frees up resources for our core mission. At the same time, we can have a dramatic impact on our sustainability goals and the reduction in our carbon emissions. It's also a good marketing tool. Students want to be a part of a campus that is progressive and being environmentally responsible. So it's really a win for the university all the way around."
Ozarks at Large transcripts are created on a rush deadline and edited for length and clarity. Copy editors utilize AI tools to review work. KUAF does not publish content created by AI. Please reach out to kuafinfo@uark.edu to report an issue. The audio version is the authoritative record of KUAF programming.
