Princeton University
OP-6: Clean and Renewable Energy

Princeton owns a 4.5 megawatt AC solar photovoltaic system. The system is comprised of 16,528 panels and nine 500kW inverters. Although the system provides approximately 5.5% of the annual electricity to campus, Princeton is selling all SRECs associated with our solar photovoltaic system until at least 2020. Additionally, Princeton owns a system of solar panels that sit on top of Frick Chemistry Laboratory. The system's designed capacity is between 70-75 kilowatts, and the system produces on average the equivalent of 2% of the building's power demand and represents less than 1% of total campus energy use. However, the building’s energy demand would likely be higher without the shade provided by the rooftop array during the summer months.

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Access the following link for information on the energy sources from which grid-purchased electricity is derived. https://www.pseg.com/info/environment/envirolabel.jsp Note that this doesn’t account for the energy sources used in the University’s cogeneration facility (either electricity, chilled water, or steam) which is mostly natural gas, but also includes a small percentage of #2 diesel. Based on the data reported in OP5 for FY 2017, energy derived from the cogeneration plant represents around 80% of total energy consumption, while grid-purchased electricity only represents around 20%. Information about the solar array: https://facilities.princeton.edu/sustainable-campus/sustainable-energy Note that the response to question #1 (total energy consumption) excludes 26,228 MM Btu of electricity generated by the University’s Solar PV system since the University sells the resulting SRECs and cannot count the output as non-emissions power. Since the SRECs are sold, and not retired or retained, the answer to question #2 (total onsite clean and renewable energy) is thus 0.