The Viking Union with digitally added solar panels to illustrate what the project will look like when completed. photo illustration courtesy of Ron Bailey

The 12 panels will generate between 1,900- and 2,300-kilowatt hours of electricity per year, depending on sunlight levels, and will help offset Westerns electricity costs.

The purpose of the kiosk is to explain the solar demonstration project and show how much power the solar panels are generating.

Students for Renewable Energy, an Associated Student club, is responsible for the installation. Club President Rose Woofenden said the project began two years ago when the club began organizing and planning for the solar panels.

Since fall 2005, Western has been using 100 percent green energy.

Green energy is energy that has been created in an environmentally friendly way, such as through wind farms, Woofenden said.

The club is currently revamping its criteria for green energy, noting that Western recently switched from a wind farm in eastern Washington to one in South Dakota because there are bigger environmental benefits.

In spring 2004, the Western student body voted to implement a fee to assist with the cost of buying renewable energy, which made using 100 percent green energy possible.

This was the first student fee of this kind anywhere in the country, Woofenden said.

The solar panels and kiosk will be located on the south side of the Viking Union and will be visible from the front of the Performing Arts Center plaza, said Manca Valum, director of development for Huxley, who has helped coordinate and secure funding for the project.

The sixth-floor kiosk will have a 17-inch liquid-crystal display screen to draw people in, Woofenden said.

Valum said the project is a fantastic example of administrative and student collaboration.

“It demonstrates Western student's activism, ability and willingness to apply what they learn to a real-world problem,” she said.

Since the components were all donated, parts of the panels have arrived in various stages, creating a logistics challenge, said operations support manager Ron Bailey, who deals with all of Western's utilities.

Western administration discussed several locations, such as the side of the bookstore or Wade King Student Recreation Center, before deciding on the Viking Union, Bailey said.

The decision had to factor in where the project would be most visible to students and where it would receive the most sunlight, he said.

The next phase of the project will include monitors in various buildings on campus that will show how much power is being used in that building.

This information can be used to determine where on campus the most energy is being used.

However, this is still in the planning stages, and no decisions on where or when have been made, Valum said.

The projects cost of $65,000 came from donations from Puget Sound Energy, Westerns Foundation Presidents Campus Enrichment Fund and Alpha Energy in Bellingham. Bonneville Environmental Foundation covered the nearly $20,000 cost of the kiosk.

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