Sun Power Lights the Art World

Music was in the air in Harvard Yard this Saturday as the Harvard Callbacks, the Harvard Opportunes and others performed in front of the Arts First crowd, but for Harvard students with a green thumb, the real story was behind the scenes—behind the main stage, to be exact—where 256 square feet of photovoltaic paneling drew power from the sun.

The solar power powered the microphones, amps and speakers of the main stage in Harvard Yard from University President Lawrence H. Summers’ opening speech at 11:30 a.m. to the end of the festivities at 5 p.m. The project, called “Rolling Sunlight,” is a collaboration among Greenpeace Clean Energy Now!, the FAS Resource Efficiency Program (REP) and the Climate Campaign. These solar panels have made appearances up and down the Northeast coast this spring, stopping at Middlebury College in Vermont the day before coming to Harvard and rolling on to Bowdoin in Maine the next day.

Bryan Y. Ho ’06, the Adams House REP representative, explained that timing was key in planning this event. Ho said that putting up a solar panel during Arts First was a good way of advertising renewable energy and demonstrating that solar energy is not bogus.

“People usually say it’s kinda mojo, but it’s a reliable technology,” Ho said.

This use of solar power comes just a week after Quincy House spent seven days running off electricity generated by wind power.

William W. Parish, director of the Climate Campaign, said that this solar battery could power an average American home for four to five days, even without receiving any sunlight. Parish, a Yale undergraduate, also praised Harvard’s REP.

“I think the FAS Resource Efficiency Program is almost unique among colleges,” he said.

The enormous solar panel attracted attention from passersby. According to Ho, some deans and even Summers dropped by to take a look at their technology.

Allison I. Rogers ’04, a REP representative in Mather House, said that REP was not so concerned with issues of energy conservation as with converting to alternative energy sources.

“We are interested not so much in efficiency but how this changes our ecological footprint,” Rogers said.

Rogers warned that the energy sources the College is using now are not environmentally sound.

“Here at the College, 90 percent of our energy comes from fossil fuel,” she said.

While some attempts have been made to employ renewable energy at Quincy House, Harvard Business School and the Kennedy School of Government, these solar panels were the only ones on the College’s campus, Rogers said.

Rogers argued that Harvard, as a major institution, could make a significant change in the energy market by investing in alternative energy sources. “In the long term,” she said, “this would make renewable energy more affordable.”

Rogers says that Allston holds great possibilities for renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power technology. She said that a survey conducted last spring by REP and the Harvard Green Campus Initiative indicated strong student support for clean energy.

While Ho and Rogers said that Harvard is generally an environmentally aware campus, they added that thinking ecologically sometimes presents a challenge to students.

“Everyone’s so caught up in their work that it takes some effort to recycle and behave in an environmentally friendly way,” Ho said.

—Staff writer Ivana V. Katic can be reached at katic@fas.harvard.edu.