The Catholic University of America (CUA) had 40 acres of undeveloped land on its West Campus in Washington, D.C., and instead of building a new entrance to the school as it had originally planned, it is now home to the capital city’s largest community solar project.
Catholic University of America facilities are seen above the trees lining the community solar project. The 7.5-MW project is located just across Harewood Road from the campus. Standard Solar
Having any land untouched by construction in a city like D.C. is rare, not to mention highly valuable. But the Catholic Church, and by extension CUA, owns more property than most organizations.
“I think we’re the largest landowner in D.C., other than the federal government, which is part of why we were able to develop a 25-acre solar array on site,” said Gabrielle Choate, director of campus sustainability for CUA.
This 7.5-MW solar array occupies part of the 40-acre plot on CUA’s West Campus, with the remaining land left to heritage trees and a tree nursery. The project was developed by Standard Solar, which had worked with CUA on a series of rooftop arrays and a solar carport between 2009 and 2012.
“The university has already taken advantage of a lot of net-metering opportunities on their other buildings … so this was a way for them to build on their previous commitments,” said Chuck VonDrehle, senior project manager at Standard Solar.
The more-than-century-old university hired Standard Solar in late 2020, and for the next year, the developer worked with the university, the city and neighborhood commissions to design and approve the community solar project.
This community solar project came online in June 2024 and Standard Solar is leasing the land for the next 20 years, but the developer models its projects for a 35-year operating lifespan. The array can host about 1,100 subscribers and is open to residents of all eight wards in D.C. CUA is subscribed to 12% of the array’s total production.
“They could have sold the land, which is super valuable in any urban area. They could have redeveloped it into townhouses or even academic buildings, and they still preserve that right or choice down the road, because this is an interim use over the next 20 years, and 20 years is a short time for the life of a university,” Finnerty said.
The West Campus array is concealed on three sides by its natural surroundings and has no direct neighbors. Prior to construction, the site was a mix of open land covered in wild shrubs and remnant forest. The land slopes southward and was slightly graded to accommodate the south-facing solar array.
Some trees had to be removed to build the system, but many were donated to the District Dept. of Transportation’s Urban Forestry Division to be milled and given to regional schools and at-risk youth programs for student projects and building infrastructure. Another portion of that wood was mulched and used on CUA’s community garden and walking paths. The remaining trees were deemed important to the site, so installers driving piles gave a wide berth to roots of heritage trees.
A native seed crop of pollinators was sown on the site of the community solar project at the Catholic University of America. For the next 20 years, this array will provide renewable energy credits for the university and D.C. residents. Standard Solar
The array is composed of FLEXRACK by QCells Fixed Tilt Series racking, CPS 275-kW string inverters and ZNShine Solar 540-W solar modules. Solar panels were installed at a 20° tilt and placed far enough away from the trees to avoid any shading. The power electronic components of the array were instead placed in the shade.
The ecological condition of that land will improve as a native pollinator seed crop is cultivated on the plot over the next few years. Local beekeepers have already placed hives at the university to bolster that biomass, as well.
During development, new fiber optic communications lines, transformers and utility feeder cables were replaced and upgraded for the grid to receive the new capacity of this community solar project. Standard Solar had to design the array with two separate grid-tie points, owing to the 3-MWAC interconnection limit for community solar projects in D.C.
“We were maximizing the project size to fit some of the public policy restrictions for the community solar programs per interconnection and also working with the existing grid line capacities with the local utility,” said John Finnerty, director of business development at Standard Solar.
Although it’s hard to spot the array from on campus, students have access to its monitoring software and production data for academic purposes, and Standard Solar is regularly holding tours of the project site.
The university was founded in 1887 and currently has a student body of 5,000, with 12 schools and 53 buildings spread across 176 acres. CUA established its Office of Campus Sustainability in 2022, which spearheads initiatives guided by Pope Francis’ call to address climate change. CUA commissioned a solar project that is serving the greater D.C. community — a community it has been in for 138 years.
“I’m really proud of the university for it. I mean, there’s a lot of uses of the land potentially, so it’s really great that we’ve decided to move the needle on renewable energy within the district, within the nation,” Choate said. “I don’t know of other universities around that have anything like this.”
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