Southern Adventist University’s school color has always been green, but the university is taking its green identity a step further this spring.
An 832-panel, 200-kilowatt solar farm is now part of the university’s campus and will generate enough energy to power the equivalent of 40 average sized homes.
Southern Adventist University students and members of the school’s Students In Free Enterprise chapter survey the solar panels they were influential in implementing. According to Marketing and University Relations Editorial Manager Lucas Patterson, graduate student Karla Coupland and undergraduate student Michael Daily were especially dedicated to the project.“As a Christian university we take pride in the idea of resource stewardship,” said Marketing and University Relations Editorial Manager Lucas Patterson. “We are blessed with an abundance of sun here in the Southeast, and this is a good opportunity to take advantage of what we’ve been given.”
According to Patterson, the new solar farm, which is comparable in size to BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee’s in downtown Chattanooga, is the result of the university’s Students In Free Enterprise chapter. Graduate student Karla Coupland and undergraduate student Michael Daily were particularly influential in the process as they each dedicated more than 100 hours of their own time to the project, Patterson said.
“The biggest reason this was something the university could get behind is because it was so well thought out by the students,” said Patterson. “They studied the TVA buy-back system and tax incentives. It makes sense and also provides an excellent example for students moving forward.”