University of Louisville
OP-6: Clean and Renewable Energy

1. The 170,000 sq ft Belknap Academic Building opened in 2018 with a photovoltaic solar system on the penthouse roof which supplies 5.1% of the total energy needs of the building. With 321 panels, it is an 89 kW system with an estimated annual production of 115,709 kWh.
2. The roof of UofL's LEED Gold certified Center for Predictive Medicine on the Shelby campus houses a 50 kilowatt solar photovoltaic array, one of the largest in Kentucky, with 254 panels.
3. Sackett Hall Solar Array (PV+HotWater): The computer controlled dual-axis tracking solar array on Sackett Hall at the J.B. Speed School of Engineering produces both electricity and hot water for the building. It is the only such tracking array in Kentucky, and is intended for research, development and education, while supplying a portion of the building's electricity and hot water. Because it is able to track the sun precisely throughout the day and across the seasons, it is 30% more efficient than fixed solar panels. The two solar thermal collectors in the center of the array provide nearly 100% of the building's hot water in the summer, and ten photovoltaic panels feed enough electricity into the grid to power the building's computer laboratory.
4. In May 2012, students in UofL's Renewable Energy & Energy Efficiency Club, designed, constructed and installed low-cost 120-watt solar panels at the Garden Commons to power the ventilation system for the new greenhouse. When these degraded a few years later and a water pump was added for a hydroponics system, the panels were replaced with two off-the-shelf solar panels.

1. In spring 2014, UofL installed a 16-panel, 165 MMBtu solar pool heating system on the roof of the Ralph Wright Natatorium to tackle the high energy demands of regulating the temperature of the largest body of water on campus - our Olympic-size pool!
2. In October 2013, UofL opened a LEED Gold Student Recreation Center that features not only a solar hot water system, but 128,000 square feet of space heated and cooled by the University's first geothermal system. The geothermal heat pipe is a closed-loop vertical well system with a total of 180 wells 400 feet deep. This system provides ample reserve capacity and is expected to generate about 22% annual energy cost savings compared to a conventional system. It is also considerably simpler and cheaper to maintain.
3. Sackett Hall Solar Array (PV+HotWater): The computer controlled dual-axis tracking solar array on Sackett Hall at the J.B. Speed School of Engineering produces both electricity and hot water for the building. It is the only such tracking array in Kentucky, and is intended for research, development and education, while supplying a portion of the building's electricity and hot water. Because it is able to track the sun precisely throughout the day and across the seasons, it is 30% more efficient than fixed solar panels. The two solar thermal collectors in the center of the array provide nearly 100% of the building's hot water in the summer, and ten photovoltaic panels feed enough electricity into the grid to power the building's computer laboratory.
4. We are investigating renewable energy options to passively heat & cool UofL buildings. At Burhans Hall on our Shelby campus, in collaboration with the Department of Energy and the Kentucky Renewable Energy Consortium, UofL's Renewable Energy Applications Laboratory (REAL) installed an experimental solar heat pipe wall for indoor climate control that may prove to be twice as efficient as other solar systems in places such as Louisville with moderate sun and cold winters. In 2011, the system was moved to a new solar test room constructed at the Speed School of Engineering behind Ernst Hall for further experimentation and monitoring. This is the only such device of its kind in the world and its active solar design is more efficient than most passive systems.

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Other source: Oil

Estimates of electricity use by source are based on the fact that the University of Louisville is located within the SERC Tennessee Valley (SRTV) U.S. eGRID subregion (see https://www.epa.gov/energy/egrid-subregion-representational-map). The regional grid mix for the most recent year available (2016) is represented in our response and is available at https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2018-02/egrid2016_data.xlsx

Percentages of building heating energy by source is calculated as follows based on the numbers reported in our most recent (2017) greenhouse gas emissions report:
Geothermal (Student Rec Center): 4960 MMBtu
Distillate Oil: 570 MMBtu (4107 gallons)
Natural Gas: 111426 MMBtu
Coal (Health Sciences Center): 247535 MMBtu (8918 short tons)
TOTAL: 364541 MMBtu