By SHANNON O. WELLS
For the first time since 2012, Pitt’s Oakland campus has a new array of electricity-generating solar panels, but the recent installation on a roof at the Petersen Sports Complex is only the beginning of a wave of solar power infrastructure coming to the University.
With the four solar panels now installed at the sports complex, the Office of Sustainability is finalizing efforts, including state and utility-company inspections, to bring the array online to offset traditional electricity sources. Installations on the rooftops of Posvar, Ruskin and David Lawrence halls are scheduled to begin this summer.
All four arrays are “behind-the-meter” rooftop solar arrays with bifacial panels that feed solar-generated energy directly into Pitt’s Oakland power system.
Combined, the new 1.08-megawatt arrays annually will produce an estimated 1,128,680-kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity, the equivalent of powering 61.5 homes or removing 109 cars from the road, noted Aurora Sharrard, assistant vice chancellor for sustainability.
Rooftop solar panels also are planned on seven current or future Pitt buildings, including the Recreation and Wellness Center, the Arena and Sports Performance Center, and BioForge, a $250 million biomanufacturing facility planned for 3.5 acres at the Hazelwood Green site. To best align the life cycle of solar panels with roofing materials, the University is focusing its solar-energy efforts on newer roofs, Sharrard noted.
She called the new solar panel array on the Petersen Sports Complex roof a “visible manifestation of Pitt’s climate action strategies being implemented behind the scenes over the past several years.
“The (Petersen Sports Complex) and other on-campus rooftop solar arrays will directly contribute to our goals of carbon neutrality by 2037 and 100 percent renewable electricity produced or procured on the same timeframe,” she said.
Cleaning the University’s energy supply is a key element of the Pitt Sustainability Plan and Climate Action Plan. Both on- and off-campus renewable projects will combine to help Pitt reach its goal of producing or procuring 50 percent renewable electricity by 2030 on the way to 100 percent renewable electricity by 2037.
“We are always focused on efficiency first, as the best carbon reduction is from energy we don’t have to use,” Sharrard said.
For the 2023 calendar year, 28.3 percent of Pitt’s electricity originated from renewable energy sources, and Pitt received a 2023 PA Solar Center Lodestar Award for its solar leadership.
Scott Bernotas, vice chancellor of facilities management, said the Petersen rooftop array and the “many more to come” will help reduce Pitt's carbon footprint by using a clean energy source. They will also improve the University’s energy reliability by relying less on the energy grid and “providing direct power that does not have transmission and distribution losses,” he added.
Another part of Pitt’s renewable energy plan is the 20-megawatt Vesper Gaucho Solar project, a 20-year power-purchase solar-panel partnership between Pitt and Texas-based Vesper Energy. It was dedicated in August 2023 at its 68-acre farm site near Findlay Township and Clinton near the Allegheny-Beaver county line.
The facility is expected to produce 37,500 megawatt hours annually for the Pitt campus via Duquesne Lighting Co.’s transmission system, reducing the University’s greenhouse gas emissions by 15,452 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, comparable to removing 3,330 fuel-burning vehicles from the roads, the Office of Sustainability said.
The on-campus rooftop solar arrays, which collectively will generate a little more than 2 megawatts, aren’t in the same league as the Vesper Gaucho project, which provides electricity equivalent to 18 percent of the University's energy consumption. Bernotas noted that the rooftop arrays “help eliminate the carbon impacts of Pitt’s remaining 82 percent of electricity that the Gaucho Solar farm does not supply.”
“It also reduces the University’s utility costs by generating electricity where it is used,” he said.
Shannon O. Wells is a writer for the University Times. Reach him at shannonw@pitt.edu.
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