By SUSAN JONES
Ruskin Hall, which was completed in 1922, is the latest building and first residence hall on the Oakland campus to get upgraded with solar panels.
The roof now has 240 solar panels that once fully charged and powered can provide about 50% of the power for the building, said Bill Kane, a senior construction manager in the Office of Planning, Design and Construction. That’s enough to power all the common areas, including the lounge, laundry room, fitness center, mailroom, hallways and stairwells.
The Ruskin array, which is awaiting an electrical part to be fully operational, will join one at the Petersen Sports Complex that came on line in April. Solar panels also are being installed now on the roofs of Posvar and David Lawrence halls, which should be functioning by the end of the year.
Solar also has been built into new projects, like the Campus Recreation and Wellness Center, the Arena and Sports Performance Center and the building at Fifth and Halket streets. There also will be a solar array on Hillman Library when the renovation is completed.
All of this is part Pitt’s effort to meet a sustainability goal of 50% renewably produced or procured electricity by 2030 and 100% by 2037.
The Ruskin panels lie flat and cover most of the roof, just leaving enough space for technicians to access them for maintenance. The array will produce 137 kilowatts, and together with Posvar and David Lawrence will put out about 1 megawatt, or 1,000 kilowatts, of power.
An app already allows Sharrard, Kane and others to track how much energy the arrays, both in Oakland and in Bradford, are producing and if there are any issues with them. She said they hope to make the usage figures available to the public at some point.
All the power created by Pitt’s solar panels is only used in the buildings they sit on. Duquesne Light does not want power to back feed into its grid, so it is involved in inspecting the systems to make sure of that, Kane said.
The roofs that get solar arrays are carefully considered for both structural soundness — each of the panels sits on 100-pound concrete slabs — and usable space.
“We're a very urban campus, so every rooftop matters,” said Aurora Sharrard, assistant vice chancellor for sustainability. “Every rooftop, we have to make a choice about what it can do for us. When we put solar on campus and feed it directly into a building, we also reduce the amount of electricity lost in the system, so we have no transmission and distribution losses.”
Sharrard said Pitt started looking at the solar potential of Oakland campus rooftops in 2018, just after she started at the University. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 gave the project a boost because “that really put more incentives for solar out there in the marketplace,” she said. “It offers an investment tax credit for anybody putting solar on any building, and also … allows direct pay of that tax credit to nonprofits, universities and governments.”
The solar panels are bought through the PittCAP (climate action plan) capital fund “which is part of our University capital budget to help mitigate carbon across the University,” Sharrard said. “That fund is allocated by our CFO and Board of Trustees every year, and it's held to return on investment protocols. We take into account utility cost escalation over time and the social cost of carbon, and it meets all of those parts.”
Sharrard said that some of the solar arrays, such as the one going up on Hillman Library, will pay for itself in cost savings in less than 12 years. The panels generally last between 25 and 35 years.
Pitt also is buying all the power from the Vesper Gaucho solar site near Pittsburgh International Airport, which came online in July 2023 and provides about 18% of campus wide electricity annually.
Susan Jones is editor of the University Times. Reach her at suejones@pitt.edu or 724-244-4042.
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