Ella Kitchens, Asst. News Editor–
Currently, solar arrays at Denison University bring in 10-12% of the university’s power, according to Director of Sustainability and Campus Improvement Jeremy King. In a little over a year, a new, larger solar array will bring that number up to almost 40%.
There will be a 25-acre solar array on land owned by the university northwest of the Homestead, an alternative student living community. The array, which administrators say will be up and running by spring 2026, will triple the amount of solar energy that Denison produces.
Denison currently uses natural gas as one of the most significant sources of power generation on campus, and electricity is purchased from the local power grid. However, with recent developments in the area, such as data centers, the price of electricity has increased. For both environmental and financial reasons, Denison is building a solar array independent of the grid.
“Solar is now pretty easy to justify because it makes a lot of sense economically. In terms of meeting electrical demand, it is now possible to save money by switching to solar,” said Jordan Katz, an associate professor and chair of chemistry and biochemistry. “In the past, that wasn’t the case.”
“In its heart, it started as a sustainability project, but it turned into something that has really has helped us manage our risk for electric costs on campus,” said Jake Preston, director of physical plant and capital projects.
The panels will utilize renewable energy instead of natural gas, which will help Denison move closer to its 2045 goal of producing net-zero emissions.
According to King, the 25-acre array is nearing the stage of construction, and the previously tree-filled site has been cleared. The array will be constructed by Kokosing Solar.
“We don’t have a solar developer on staff,” said King. “We hired this company, Kokosing, to design and build this array for us. That’s the phase that we’re in now.”
For the past two years, the new array has been carefully planned. The array went through an approval process that was multifaceted.
“There are multiple layers of approval, but I am one of the approval layers for both the financial outlay and also the capital projects,” said Denison Chief Financial Officer David English. “We have to think about both, do we have the staff time and expertise? Do we want to do the project? How do we fund the project?”
This led to the decision to hire Kokosing Solar. After that, there were still necessary layers of approval.
“There’s a lot of permitting it takes to make a project like this happen. That’s a good thing,” said Preston. “There’s a lot of eyes on this. We’ve worked really closely with Licking County, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Ohio EPA, the township. So there are a lot of different permitting agencies that are involved.”
“We made sure that we did our due diligence,” said English.
However, the decision to build the array did not come without some risks. One risk is the potential for reduced efficiency due to fixed panels if the weather became more overcast long-term.
“You’re building a solar array and counting on it to produce electricity,” said English. “If for some reason it is much cloudier or the weather doesn’t cooperate, production will go down. This is a fixed array, which means there are no moving parts. So there aren’t motors that turn the panels to capture the sun, because those can break in the wrong position. These are just fixed. It reduces the efficiency a little bit, but there’s no risk of failure. There’s no moving part. They’re panels out there in a field.”
Another concern is a decrease in tax incentives for renewable energy. These incentives existed under the Biden administration, but under Trump, will be reduced.
“Certainly the Trump administration seems very keen on moving away from policies that promote a shift to renewable energies,” said Katz. “But again, the solar array will outlast, I hope, the Trump presidency. Policies change. What happens in the next three or four years isn’t necessarily what’s going to happen in the next 20 or 30 years. But it certainly hasn’t made it easier.”
Despite less incentives to move to renewable energy, solar energy would still be a more profitable option than staying on the local power grid because of how expensive buying electricity has become.
Throughout the process, student advocacy was a big part of making this new array happen.
“Green Team and Outdoors Club have been two of the biggest advocates for more renewable energy on campus,” said Tom Vodrey, ‘25.
Vodrey is a politics and public affairs major. He is a member of Green Team, part of their net-zero project, and is a student representative on the Campus Sustainability Committee.
“[These organizations] have staged protests, run petition drives, and raised awareness of the potential for net zero at Denison,” he said. “Their work together has gone a long way toward showing administrators that projects like this solar array are something which students want, in order to make Denison a model for other universities of what an environmentally responsible institution looks like.”
The administration collaborated with students on this project, and support for the array is strong among students.
“I think the administration will respond to what students think is important. So if students want changes, I think the administration is usually pretty responsive to that,” said Katz.
“We have not had any pushback to the new array from the Denison community, none that I have heard. Not a single person of the Denison community has voiced any sort of negativity towards this project,” said King. “On the Granville side of things, this site is adjacent to some homes belonging to some residents of Granville Township. In the zoning process, there were a couple of people in the zoning process who voiced some concerns about having that array there. But they were not anti-solar; in fact, they didn’t think it was a bad idea.”
Once the array is finished, there will be little maintenance or further construction required, which will make it easier for those living nearby. However, there is one thing that must be maintained: vegetation.
“When it’s done and it’s built, we’ll have to maintain the vegetation underneath the panels. Some people mow that vegetation. Some people plant pollinator habitat, which is what we did with our first array. For this one, our plan is to graze sheep,” said King.
A local farmer based out of nearby Jacksontown will bring his flock of sheep to the solar site. During the growing season, the sheep will rotate through different parts of the 25 acre site to graze under the array.
“This is what we do in agriculture anyways. You put your animal on a pasture and then they eat and then you’ve got to move them to the next pasture,” said King. “So we’re going to do the same thing on the solar site, just move them around the site.”
While the site is a significant amount of land, Denison has more land that they own and could have built panels on. However, there are advantages to keeping the new array to 25 acres.
“Solar is not something you just build as big as you possibly can. There is actually a theoretical limit to what you would want to produce on your side of the meter,” said Preston. “So we had to spend a lot of time understanding where our load was and what made sense and what doesn’t make sense to put so much solar in that you can’t even support the cost.”
With the installment of these panels, Denison will be powered by nearly 40% solar energy, but a switch to 100% solar would not be possible. Since there is no sun available for the panels at night, and a way to reliably store this energy has not been developed yet, they could not power the university continuously.
“I think absolutely we can get to what’s called net zero, where on the whole, even if we do emit, we are removing as much carbon as we’re emitting,” said Katz. “But I think that’s going to take sort of a balanced approach of maybe some solar, maybe some other programs to try to minimize our emissions and also be creative about where we get our energy from.