Director of Industry and Innovation FREEDM Systems Center at NC State Raleigh, North Carolina, United States
The 2022 Solar District Cup Team from North Carolina State University was assigned the use case for Ohio State University which provided two locations for PV and battery installation: some pastureland in the agricultural farm and rooftops and parking decks in the OSU Medical Campus. Our team selected bifacial panels with single axis trackers for the pasture and a mixture of bifacial and monofacial panels on six different structures in the medical campus. Our solar system design considered glare impacts for medivac helicopters, shading simulations using Aurora Solar, and alignment with the OSU Master Plan. All together, we proposed over 2 Megawatts of PV that would generate nearly 3 million kilowatt hours per year. The team also considered distribution system impacts and evaluated PV hosting capacity at various connection points. We evaluated flood plains, historical boundaries, and land use restrictions. Our financial team determined an internal rate of return of 5% for the PV installations. However, considering existing regulatory requirements for hospital resiliency, we determined that batteries were too expensive for this particular use case. In addition to the training provided by NREL, our team interviewed multiple experts including solar installers, storage consultants, and hospital electrical engineers. Our original proposal, "Udderly" Sustainable Solar, included agrivoltaic considerations for continued dairy cow grazing in the pasture. However, cows and solar do not make good neighbors, so we shifted to sheep grazing, a "shear" genius idea.
