The College began to install solar energy panels on the roof of Murdough Hall on Monday, changing its original plan to put the panels on the roof of the Kiewit Computation Center.
Until early Monday morning, Dartmouth planned to place the photovoltaic panels on Kiewit's roof based on the recommendation of students who took Environmental Studies 50 last winter.
But due to "access reasons," the College decided to change the location of the panels to Murdough Hall, Environmental Studies Professor Doug Bolger said. Murdough is part of the Thayer School of Engineering and the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration.
Bolger said it would be more difficult to install the panels on Kiewit than to install them on Murdough.
"You can't get to the roof from Kiewit, so you have to go up with a ladder, which makes access difficult and dangerous," Bolger said. The panels will be fully installed in about two or three weeks, he said.
The College hopes the panels will help increase awareness of alternate energy sources and the panels will give students and professors the opportunity to do solar energy research.
Bolger said if the panels remained at Kiewit, they would be difficult to access and adjust.
Murdough has a stairwell leading directly up to the roof. There is also very little shading on Murdough's rubber-sealed roof.
The overall project for the Environmental Studies 50 course was to perform an energy audit of campus buildings and to suggest technologies the College could employ to reduce energy consumption.
The solar panels can generate about 20 kilowatt hours of energy per day on a sunny day, enough energy to power 30 personal computers for eight hours.
The project costs about $60,000, but Bolger said the U.S. Department of Energy and the New England Electric System Company will help pay more than half of the costs.
