STARKVILLE — A solar facility at Mississippi State University will save the university money while laying the groundwork for potential solar expansion projects in the future, Ryan Burrage, state director of Mississippi for Entegrity Energy Partners, told the Starkville Rotary Club Monday.
Entegrity Energy Partners is the engineering company the university chose in 2019 to facilitate its renewable energy efficiency project.
“When people are thinking about solar, there’s a lot of healthy skepticism,” he said. “What we want to do as a company is to prove that it works financially. By having some historical data in a year or two to show the university, this is what the system has done, then it really gives us a foothold to go and talk about other expansion ideas.”
The facility, which includes more than 3,400 solar panels, is the largest on-campus solar array of any university in the Southeastern Conference. After coming online in June, it will produce an estimated 2.4 million kilowatt hours per year.
The solar facility is located on a 4-acre field in between Robert Louis Jones Circle and Blackjack Road. Burrage said the site was chosen primarily for its close proximity to the university’s substation.
“It’s strategically located to tie directly into the grid because ultimately what we want is for the kilowatt hours to be consumed with the buildings on campus,” he said. “Based on the transmission layout of the university’s grid, it’s able to push kilowatt hours into buildings very efficiently.”
The second part of the project includes updating the lighting in 4 million square feet of buildings with more than 110,000 LED lights. The update, Burrage said, is an immediate way for the university to save money on energy.
“Really you’re looking at reducing the consumption of the light bulbs in the buildings on campus by around 60 to 65 percent,” he said. “So that’s a significant payback very quickly, and that money really starts adding up in your operating budget.”
Saunders Ramsey, executive director of MSU campus services, said the LED project is an important aspect to the university’s energy efficiency efforts.
“That’s the one that really cash flows immediately,” Ramsey said. “It’s the one that makes the project doable.”
Together, the solar panel installation along with the LED updates will save the university $885,000 and 10.7 million kilowatt hours of energy per year. Burrage said the project in its entirety is a great financial investment.
“By paying for the project, which is just about $7.5 million, they’re going to see annual savings over a 20 year period of $23 million,” he said. “It really is a great financial return and one that we rarely get to see.”
Burrage said there are several potential future phases of the project, like installing solar panels in other areas on campus, including on top of campus buildings. Other potential additions to the project could include a program at the Thad Cochran Research Park that combines solar power with inter-row cropping with a goal of increasing land productivity.
There are a lot of further opportunities for research, Burrage said.
“Every time you hear the announcement of a new building going on campus, that means more kilowatt hours are getting consumed,” he said. “Y’all can rest easy knowing that your administration at the university is really working hard to reduce what the long-term liability of what those kilowatt hours are.”
McRae is a general assignment and education reporter for The Dispatch.
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