St. John’s College Santa Fe Goes 100% Solar

New solar installation to be unveiled on Earth Day April 22 at St. John’s College. Photo by Kevin Lange

SANTA FE — St. John’s College President Mark Roosevelt will cut the ribbon on a new grid-tied solar installation at noon Saturday, April 22. The installation will generate 100% of the campus’s electricity and includes 1,670 solar panels and 20 electric vehicle charging stations for use by the St. John’s community.

“At St. John’s College, we are proud to be moving forward on multiple fronts The implementation of these sustainable solutions ensures that our campus facilities and student offerings fit the culture we’ve built our institution on,” Roosevelt said. “I’m thrilled that we’re incorporating innovative technologies into our campus design and entering into a new era of environmental responsibility.”

The installation is grid-tied, which means that the college’s solar panels feed excess power to the PNM grid. During times of the day that the solar installation produces less than the full college requirements, the grid “repays” the electricity from PNM to the St. John’s campus.

Solar deployment is one part of the college’s commitment to investing in a sustainable campus. Recently, St. John’s replaced 100% of its lighting with light-emitting diode (LED) technology and updated electrical systems in Evans Science Laboratory, Pritzker Student Center, Santa Fe Hall, and the Fine Arts Building (FAB). High-efficiency boilers were installed at FAB, Weigle Hall, and Meem Library. These efforts provide annual electricity savings of more than 358,000 kW/h and will save the college more than $100,000 annually.

This project was made possible by two anonymous alumni philanthropists and the St. John’s College Class of 2019 senior class gift.

The ribbon-cutting takes place at noon, Saturday, April 22, at the solar array, which is at the entrance to the college,1160 Camino De Cruz Blanca. The event is part of St. John’s public Earth Day celebrations, which include music, film, outdoor activities and presentations. Details at sjc.edu/earthday

sjc.edu/about/campuses/santa-fe

ABOUT ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE

St. John’s College is one of the most distinctive colleges in the country due to its all-required Great Books curriculum. At St. John’s, undergraduate and graduate students read more than 200 of the most important books across dozens of subjects and discuss those books with faculty in small, seminar-style classes. Located on two campuses in two historic state capitals—Annapolis, Maryland, and Santa Fe, New Mexico—St. John’s is the third-oldest college in the United States and has been hailed as the “most contrarian college in America” by The New York Times, the “most rigorous college in America” by Forbes, and the “most forward-thinking, future-proof college in America” by Quartz. Learn more at sjc.edu.

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