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Snow can’t stop solar celebration
From left, Walter Hood, Shivani Kamodia, Paul Belnick, President Satish K. Tripathi and Robert Shibley celebrate after symbolically “energizing” the Solar Strand. Photo: DOUGLAS LEVERE
A little snow couldn’t stop UB from celebrating the sun on Monday with the dedication of the UB Solar Strand, the new 3,200-panel solar array on the North Campus.
More than 250 people attended the opening ceremony, which took place across the street from the Solar Strand inside the Center for Tomorrow. As bright white flakes of snow fell outside, guests in the standing-room-only crowd paid tribute to the sun and solar energy by donning royal blue sunglasses that were handed out as gifts.
The Solar Strand, with a maximum rated capacity of 750 kilowatts, is one of the largest ground-mounted photovoltaic arrays in New York State. It is expected to produce enough power to meet the needs of hundreds of student apartments, cutting UB’s greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 400 tons each year.
At Monday’s ceremony, the audience included UB students, staff and faculty, as well as members of the public and representatives of companies that helped build the Solar Strand.
President Satish K. Tripathi delivered remarks on behalf the university. He discussed the value of green energy and thanked UB partners, including state officials and the New York Power Authority (NYPA), which funded the Solar Strand with more than $7 million.
“The progress we celebrate today is the result of tremendous collaboration and partnership in support of a shared vision for a sustainable future,” Tripathi said.
Other speakers at the event included Dennis R. Black, vice president for university life and services; Paul Belnick, vice president of energy services for NYPA; Robert G. Shibley, campus architect and dean of the School of Architecture and Planning; Shivani Kamodia, environmental health sciences student; and Walter Hood, the internationally renowned landscape architect who designed the array and surrounding landscape.
In a short speech that drew some of the loudest applause, Hood shared his vision for the Solar Strand.
The array comprises groups of solar panels aligned in three parallel rows, each a quarter-mile long. Seen from above, the installation appears as “three stripes in the landscape,” as Hood described it. That design, along with nearby grasses mowed in a similar geometric pattern, recalls the campus’s agricultural past.
And that, said Hood, was the inspiration for the Solar Strand: “the history of this culture, the agricultural fields that were here before, the creek that ran wild and recharged the ground, the birds that used to be here.”
The Solar Strand draws connections between the region’s past and the present. Today, with the array generating energy, the land on which it sits is productive—just as the local landscape was when farms blanketed the area years before.
For the university, the significance of the Solar Strand is not only in the energy it produces, but in the way it will engage the public and UB community in thinking about sustainability.
The project supported jobs at nearly 40 New York State-based companies, and one of the most poignant moments of Monday’s dedication came during a video of a worker who took part in the construction.
“Twenty years from now, I can drive by with my grandkids and tell them, ‘I did that. That was me and my company, we built that project,’” the worker said. “And it’s an honor to be a part of it.”
In coming years, the Solar Strand will serve as a natural classroom for both UB students and school children. Walkways that weave between the panels will open soon, giving the public a chance to enjoy the site. The array’s tallest grouping of solar panels shelter three outdoor “social rooms” where people can gather.
As Shibley said during the array’s construction, the Solar Strand is all about rethinking how we produce energy—and how our energy-production facilities can be a part of our lives.
“In fulfilling the artist’s vision, we establish a new design vocabulary for solar installations,” Shibley said. “Communities have sometimes rejected solar projects, fearful that they would be ugly or industrial. Here, we have something that is both enormously practical and artistic.”
To close Monday’s ceremony, Shibley joined Hood, Kamodia, Belnick, Tripathi and Black in pulling a set of large, red levers that lit up a UB logo and triggered a bout of celebratory hand-clapping from the audience.
To track the Solar Strand’s energy production, visit the Solar Strand page on the UB Green website.
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