As the sun beats down on Schewel Hall at Lynchburg College, high-tech solar panels on the roof convert the sun’s energy into electricity.
“They’re tapped right into the electrical system of the building,” said Dave Fisher, physical plant director at LC.
The solar panels are part of a $4.65 million project to reduce energy consumption at Lynchburg College over an 18-month period. If all goes as planned, the project will fund itself by reducing the college’s utility bill by about a third, Fisher said.
LC’s energy initiative stems from nationwide push to reduce greenhouse gas emissions on college campuses.
In 2007, LC president Kenneth Garren was among dozens of college presidents to sign the American College & University Presidents’ Climate Commitment.
“The idea was that we were going to do something significant on our campuses to save energy, to reduce our carbon footprint,” Garren said.
In 2009, LC hired Ameresco, an energy service company, to conduct an audit to determine how the college could reduce its energy use. Ameresco came up with more than 50 ideas, and from that list, college officials selected about 21 to implement.
Now that the students are on summer vacation, the college is taking advantage of vacant dormitories and buildings to get the bulk of the work done.
This week, workers stripped outdated toilets from dormitories and replaced them with low-flow toilets to reduce water consumption.
The athletic fields have been rigged with a computerized irrigation system that takes the weather into account before turning on the sprinklers. Now, if the fields need water but there’s a thunderstorm in the forecast, the sprinklers will stay off and let mother nature do the watering.
Shackelford Hall, a dormitory getting a complete overhaul this summer, will be outfitted with new heat pumps to replace the less efficient air conditioning units.
The long-term payback will come in utility bill savings, Fisher said. After one year, the savings is expected to equal about $583,000; by year nine, the savings could be closer to $1 million.
“With the cost of energy going up, the more expensive the energy gets, the more you’re saving,” Fisher said.
Some of the campus changes are mostly educational.
For example, Lynchburg College is installing meters that will monitor water and electricity usage in the dormitories. The readings will be broadcast online and on TV screen on campus to raise awareness of students’ energy use habits.
As for the solar panels on Schewel Hall, they provide only a small percentage of the building’s electricity, but the savings adds up, Fisher said. Since the panels were installed this spring, they have generated enough power offset 2,650 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions.
The public can track how much energy the panels are generating by visiting a real-time monitoring system at http://www.lynchburgcollegesolar.com/.
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