"Why doesn't the company installing the solar panels at U of I put them over the parking lot? I would provide shade for the cars underneath and would eliminate having to kill whatever would be underneath them in the fields."
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Plant Sciences Laboratory
1201 Dorner Drive
61801
Urbana
, IL
United States
Illinois
Projects at this location
| Project | Description |
|---|---|
| Solar Desalination |
The Solar Desalination funding program will develop novel technologies or concepts using solar thermal energy to assist in creating freshwater from otherwise unusable waters. Thermal desalination is a potential solution to increase water supplies for municipal water and agriculture, and is an important technology to purify water produced from various industrial processes, including oil and gas production. |
| U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) |
The U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center helps solve the nation’s most challenging problems in civil and military engineering, geospatial sciences, water resources, and environmental sciences for the Army, Department of Defense, civilian agencies, and the Nation’s public good. |
| Infrastructure Security and Energy Restoration (ISER) |
This program applyies the Department of Energy's technical expertise to help ensure the security, resiliency and survivability of key energy assets and critical energy infrastructure. |
| Building Technologies Office |
The Building Technologies office leads a network of research and industry partners to continually develop innovative, cost-effective energy saving solutions in building design. Some of the relevant programs under the Building Technologies office include |
| SUNSHOT Initiative |
The SUNSHOT initiative is a national effort to support solar energy adoption by making solar energy affordable for all Americans through research and development efforts in collaboration with public and private partners. |
| FY15 RCx |
In FY15, the Retrocommissioning teams completed twelve buildings. |
| ICECF 2008 Lighting Retrofit |
The ICECF 2008 Lighting Retrofit was the first round of the T-12 to T-8 Lighting Retrofit Project. A total of 52,810 T-12 fixtures were replaced with thinner, more energy effiecient T-8 fixtures. This will incur a total Annual KWh Savings of 8,630,641 hours. Thirty-one university buildings were involved in this round of the project. The total Simple Payback is estimated to be 2.13. |
| Plant Sciences Window Shades |
Shades reduce heat from the sun, and thereby reduce the energy needs for temperature control. These shades replace the need for seasonal soaping of the windows. Cost avoidance accrues to the department. This project was funded by the Student Sustainability Committee. |
| Rooftop Solar Potential |
One potential method for acheiving the 2015 iCAP goal for on-campus solar is to retrofit existing campus buildings with rooftop solar. The amount of sun shine on each roof, the viability of the building itself, and the funding mechanisms all need to be reviewed and resolved for this idea to be implemented. The viability for each building includes approval from the Architectural Review Committee, agreement of the building occupant facility leaders, and structural and electrical viability for the building. As of 2016, the financial payback for solar photovoltaics is not strong enough to ea |
Project Updates
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6/28/2020
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4/2/2019
For all of our buildings with renewable energy systems, we employ a net metering method. We deduct the energy supplied by the system from the building load on the campus grid. So, if ECE uses about 250,000 kwh of electricity per month, and the r