Rafael Arroyo volunteered at the Outdoor Program as a freshman unaware that in three years he’d raise over $26,000 for a project that involved building a 6-kilowatt solar electric array atop the Outdoor Program’s Barn.
As a junior Arroyo received the part time job as the OP’s environmental sustainability coordinator. He said the position itself didn’t have any guidelines or specific projects for him to work on.
“To do this project I had to put it together from the ground up and develop something that I had no idea how to do,” Arroyo said.
It didn’t take long for Arroyo to begin adding things to his position’s blank to-do list. Arroyo researched possible ways the OP Barn could be more environmentally friendly. Arroyo found that when the OP Barn underwent major renovations in 2009, a solar power system was included in the original plans but was cut because of lack of funds.
Arroyo met with Lane Community College’s energy management program and they helped him do an energy audit to figure out how much energy the OP barn was using. Knowing the amount of energy need to produce, Arroyo was able to borrow a tool that analyzes sun patterns from the Solar Radiation Monitoring Laboratory at the University of Oregon.
“I think Rafeal is a real go getter,” said Mary Farrington. “Personable and driven and just a nice guy to work with.”
Farrington is a grant writer with the University of Oregon and helps students with constructing grant proposals for student fee funded programs. With a little help from Farrington, Arroyo wrote two grant applications last year and received $9,500 from the Student Sustainability Center and $17,000 from the Over-Realized Fund.
The project was installed in early August and has already lowered the cost of the Barn’s electricity bill.
“Since we’ve had the photovoltaic system installed for the past six weeks, we’ve off set about ten trees,” Outdoor Program staff member Dave Villalobos.
The main goal of the project was to reduce their environmental impact. With the new solar electric arrays the OP Barn is now creating it’s own power, rather than using energy created from the grid. The solar panels are generating approximately 5 to 5.88 kilowatts of power when the OP Barn uses approximately 3 kilowatts of power. Arroyo said it’s even creating an excess of energy most of the time, so it’s actually giving power back to the grid.
“We’re contributing rather than utilizing resources,” Arroyo said.
Arroyo said the program is holding out on making a bigger solar electric array system until they improve making other parts of the facility more efficient. The OP plans to get a new air compressor — which utilizes the most energy — before purchasing more solar panels which according to Arroyo, would increase the power generated to 12 to 15 kilowatts of power every hour.
“This project is just a small fraction of what we are going to see from Rafael in the future,” Villalobos said.
The OP is hosting a solar power project celebration open to the public at 5-8 p.m. on Thursday, September 19 at the OP Barn — 1225 18th Ave. The free event will have light food and live music to acknowledge everyone who made the project possible.