South facade at Lu building  "At the new Sidney Lu Mechanical Engineering Building at the northwest corner of Green and Goodwin, Urbana, the south façade has an intriguing glass — perhaps with embedded solar panels or something like that? What is the product, and what is it's purpose?"

Your answer comes from engineer Damon McFall, director of facilities and operations in Mechanical Science & Enegineering.

Andrew Li, Halie Collins, and Morgan White met today to launch a student-led project to get an update for all the small scale solar projects on campus.  Andrew will be reaching out to the project contacts over the next few months to get a status update and associated photos, links, etc. for each project.  He will then update the iCAP Portal accordingly.

According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, solar power is the fastest-growing energy source in the U.S. and this growth will continue to rise. At the moment, only a few states have adopted solar PV end-of-life handling policies. Thus, a lot of modules may end up in landfills. The panel discussion will be on barriers, policies, and sustainable opportunities for end-of-life PV modules.

"Why doesn't the company installing the solar panels at U of I put them over the parking lot? I would provide shade for the cars underneath and would eliminate having to kill whatever would be underneath them in the fields."

The best option for building solar panels is ground-mounted, said Morgan White, the associate director for sustainability at the University of Illinois.

The CEE 398 Project Based Learning and the Sustainability Minor's ENVS 492 Capstone students completed their nine fall 2017 reports.

There were five projects completed for capstone partners:

1. Energy Dashboards for Accenture
2. Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for Johnson Controls
3. Food Hub Study for The Land Connection
4. Sensors and Green Buildings for CERL
5. Biomass Life Cycle Cost Analysis (LCCA) for Chip Energy

There were four other projects completed by CEE students:

The EGEN SWATeam held another bi-weekly meeting. Topics covered include:

• Ximing Cai's [in attendance] vision for iSEE and SWATeams
• Developing a recommendation to expand UIUC solar farm.
• Developing a recommendation for another clean energy PPA
• Cost savings for geothermal systems and opportunities for implementation at solar farm and new building sites