Each semester, students at the University of Toledo in Ohio are asked if they’d like to add $5 to their tuition bill to fund sustainability activities across campus. A committee of undergraduate and graduate students, the Student Green Fund, has been managing those extra dollars since 2017, supporting green initiatives including installing high-efficiency hand dryers in campus bathrooms and refillable water bottle stations in high-traffic buildings.
Credit: SPW
Another major student-led project has been a solar array near the University of Toledo Medical Center on the Health Science campus. The first 330-kW phase (benefitting from $350,000 from the Student Green Fund) was completed in 2020, and the university today cut the ribbon on a 420-kW expansion, which received $530,000 from students.
Both project phases feature thin-film solar panels from First Solar, a company with a deep connection to the Toledo community. The “Father of Commercialized Solar,” Harold McMaster, first produced cadmium telluride (CdTe) modules through his company Solar Cells Inc. (SCI) in the late ’90s in Toledo. SCI later became First Solar, which is today the world’s largest thin-film solar producer with a manufacturing campus just outside “The Glass City.”
“This project is an exciting, real-world demonstration of the importance of the groundbreaking advances being made at First Solar and the strong connection to our work at the Wright Center for Photovoltaics Innovation and Commercialization,” said Michael Heben, a Distinguished University Professor and the Helen and Harold McMaster Chair and Director of UToledo’s Wright Center.
First Solar Series 6 Plus panels alongside the originally installed Series 5. Credit: SPW
First Solar donated Series 5 modules for the project’s first phase, and Series 6 Plus modules were installed in the second phase. Commonly seen only on large utility-scale installations, First Solar CdTe panels are more frequently entering the distributed generation market. UToledo’s now 750-kW solar project will provide the university with clean energy and also give students valuable solar generation data for study.
UToledo is a leader in the research and development of CdTe and other thin-film technologies. University physicists — including two who are credited among the most highly cited researchers in the world — routinely publish research that supports advancements in solar and materials science.
“This solar array project has grown into a sustainable system that improves our campus utilities while supporting community electrical grid reliability,” said Michael Green, director of energy sustainability and energy efficiency at UToledo. “It would not have happened without the Student Green Fund and First Solar.”
UToledo and the Student Green Fund are now exploring a possible third phase of the solar project.
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