Local campuses go green

Grant Welker had this article in the Fall River Herald News about the installation of 420 solar panels on roofs at Bristol Community College (BCC). The solar installation is part of a $500,000 program to cut energy usage at the campus. The solar panels are expected to generate 100 KW and add to the 10 KW produced by 50 panels that were installed previously. The low energy production from the installation points to a problem with solar power installations. The sun's energy per square foot on the earth's surface is low (on average about 164 watts per square meter) and the efficiency of the panels at capturing that energy is also low (around 30% efficient at best nowadays). So the most energy that we can collect on average is 50 watts per square meter. DURING DAYLIGHT HOURS! At our latitiude about 8 hours per day at this time of year. That yields a total of 400 watts per square meter per day.
To equal the peak output of the proposed Dartmouth wind turbine installation with solar panels, ...

... you would need to install 13,860 solar panels of the type that BCC used.
Mr. Welker had this article a couple of weeks ago about UMass Dartmouth's effort to reduce their energy consumption. The campus is considering solar panels and perhaps a wind turbine but most of the savings, as at BCC,comes from consuming less.
This points the way to how all of us can cut our energy use, lower the thermostat, use energy efficient lighting, disconnect small loads like computers, and other electronics when not in use. The average European home uses 30% less energy than they did 20 years ago and they are getting lower all the time. The US is still headed in the opposite direction.