By lauren Otis, Staff Writer
PLAINSBORO Any day now, weather permitting, the switch will be flipped and solar-generated power will flow from 5,000 new photovoltaic panels installed on the roof of the archival library jointly owned and operated by Princeton University, Columbia University and the New York Public Library on Princeton’s Forrestal campus.
The newly installed 370-kilowatt solar-power system has just received final approval by PSE&G and so is ready to go, said Bob Rittenhouse, a partner at Aegis Property Group, the project management firm for the library storage facility formally known as the Research Collections and Preservation Consortium (ReCAP).
”This is a warehouse facility with a huge flat roof, so the economies of scale worked out real well,” said Tom Nyquist, Princeton University’s director of engineering and construction.
Mr. Nyquist said there is only one other solar-power project on the Princeton campus, a more modest 80-kilowatt solar-panel system to be installed as part of the new chemistry building. Because of the nature of the buildings on Princeton’s campus, old and new, with their gabled, sloping roofs as well as newer architectural elements, it is often impractical to consider the installation of solar panels on them, he said.
”This originally came to pass when we were doing the latest expansion to their facility,” several years ago, Mr. Rittenhouse said of the ReCAP project.
The original ReCAP facility a high-density, environmentally controlled shelving facility for the archival storage and easy retrieval of books, papers and other library materials of the three participating institutions was built prior to the formalization of the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) green building rating system, Mr. Rittenhouse said.
Aegis asked Princeton-based KSS Architects, its design partner for the project, to conduct an evaluation of incorporating sustainable design features into the expansion, to see if LEED certification could be obtained, Mr. Rittenhouse said. The certification provides verification that a building is environmentally responsible and a healthy place to live and work, according to the U.S. Green Building Council Web site.
It turned out LEED certification could not be obtained but “it was during that evaluation that our engineer had done an energy study and had kind of an epiphany,” that how the facility used electricity combined with the potential of its 53,000-square-foot roof, made it an ideal candidate for a solar-power system, he said. .
”So we then began looking at the economics of putting an affordable system on the building,” he said. There were plenty of incentives at the time, including a New Jersey renewable energy credit program and rebates, and a federal tax-redit program, he said, but “because ReCAP is a not-for-profit the federal tax-credit portion wouldn’t apply because they don’t pay taxes.”
So to make a ReCAP solar-power system economically viable, PPL Renewable Energy, a subsidiary of Pennsylvania Power & Light, was brought in as an investor in the project, Mr. Rittenhouse said. The Princeton facilities department helped ReCAP find PPL as an investor, he said.
His department put ReCAP in touch with a solar energy consulting firm, Branchburg-based Dome-Tech Solar, that helped identify an outside investor to fund the photovoltaic system, Mr. Nyquist said.
No capital investment by ReCAP in the solar project was necessary as a result, Mr. Rittenhouse said. ReCAP has signed a 15-year agreement to purchase power generated by the solar facility from PPL at current rates, but that baseline rate is guaranteed for the full 15 years, he said. Effectively, “we’re leasing them our roof and they are selling us the power back,” he said of the arrangement.
Mr. Rittenhouse said such economic agreements enabling solar power systems to be constructed were increasingly common, and predicted more similar projects in the area.

