On Tuesday November 12th, Auraria Sustainable Campus Program, in partnership with Namasté Solar, held a Solarbration event to recognize the completion of the Auraria Library solar array.
Students, faculty, staff, and members of the community gathered near the library’s discovery wall for solar conversation and light appetizers. The event was centered around speeches from the ASCP’s Chris Herr and Namaste Solar’s Elliot Abel, and concluded with a ribbon cutting ceremony. There was also a cake that had “CO2e” written on it in icing, representing the “cutting” of carbon that will occur by replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy.
The library is now home to the largest single rooftop solar array in downtown Denver.
This project was completely student fee funded and was chosen based on a 2018 student survey that asked students to identify priority focus areas of sustainability (solar energy ranked second behind recycling/composting).
The 779 kW library array is comprised of 2,106 total panels. It will produce over 1.14 million kilowatt-hours annually, which is enough to power over 100 homes and offset over 2/3 of the library's annual energy use. The array also prevents 1.2 million lbs CO2 emissions from entering the atmosphere each year—the equivalent of taking 116 cars off the road!
Thank you to everyone that attended Solarbration and tracked the progress of the
installation! We couldn’t make awesome projects like this possible without your support.
For more information on the Auraria Library Solar Array, check out these featured links: