FAIRBANKS-- A sunny hillside on the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus may one day be home to the largest solar test site in Alaska, generating enough juice to provide roughly 20 percent of the campus power needs on a clear day -- so long as that day is not in November, December or January, when sunlight is scarce.
At a meeting last week in Juneau, the University of Alaska Board of Regents put new life in the solar-collector plan, which would cover about 4 acres on a south slope that extends beneath the Butrovich Building on the West Ridge.
UAF administrators said they worked "diligently" to respond to concerns about aesthetics and price raised by the regents in June, when the board voted for the project 5-3. Three members missed the June vote, leaving the board one vote shy of the six-vote majority needed to move it forward. After getting an update last week, the board gave its OK to proceed with planning.
Using summer's long daylight hours
The next step is to prepare a request for proposals, which could lead to a construction plan that would still require advance approval by the regents. This is an alternative to the original proposal by Siemens to build the system and sell power to the university.
The eventual cost of power is not known, but the goal is to produce power that will either come close to or beat what it would cost the university to buy it from the local utility in the summer. The campus has its own heat and electric plant, but in the summer, when millions of square feet do not have to be heated, the plant does not produce as much electricity as in the winter, so millions of kilowatt hours must be purchased.
Long hours of summer sunlight could be part of the solution to campus power needs. Solar collectors would not operate in winter, when the sun climbs just a few degrees above the horizon, but by the time February rolls around, that would change. In March, the cold weather and the sun reflecting off the snow would add to the efficiency of the system.
The collectors would either be stationary or designed to track the sun, alternatives that require balancing the increased power that would be generated by tracking the sun with the increased costs of operation and maintenance. A few more stationary collectors might be the better option, said Gwen Holdman, director of the Alaska Center for Energy and Power, which is working with the university on the plan.
The project would also fit well with engineering programs at UAF, exploring the issues related to integrating a DC power supply with the campus grid and demonstrating how solar power could work in Alaska. "Potentially, the solar array could be used for research by engineering students and the community as a study in alternative energy production in a northern climate," UAF said in its summary.
Dealing with glare
The Federal Aviation Administration has determined the solar collectors would not be a hazard to aviation. And university officials said the fence they would propose for the site would blend in with enclosures used by the botanical garden and the experimental farm nearby.
University officials said the request for proposals will likely ask for details on how glare would be kept to a minimum and how the collectors could be arranged to maximize power output.
The site would be configured to allow a 12-foot ski trail corridor, an access road and a buffer to separate the solar array from a new snowboarding site to the east, according to the tentative plans.
"The end result will be a hillside that provides an energy resource for the university while creating a more uniform and attractive slope," the university said.
Contact Dermot Cole at dermot(at)alaskadispatch.com. Follow him on Twitter @DermotMCole