Case Western Reserve University has won design approval for a wind turbine and a rooftop solar panel array on the university's southern campus.
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Part of the Case Western Reserve Campus stretches north behind the Cleveland Orchestra's Severance Hall. The university's skyline would have three wind turbines under a proposal the school is working on.CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Case Western Reserve University won't just research renewable energy. It wants to use it.
The university won approval this morning from a city design review committee to erect a wind turbine on its southern campus and to install solar panels on a nearby gym.
The Cleveland Planning Commission will review the two projects Friday.
The turbine would go up west of Adelbert Road, near athletic fields that front the Veale Center, university officials said. It would stand 156 feet tall, from ground level to the top of the rotating blades, said Margaret Carney, the university's lead architect and planner.
The turbine will help power Veale Center, officials said. The cost of the $600,000 turbine project will be covered by some $3 million the university received last year from Ohio's Third Frontier, a taxpayer-funded program that promotes high-tech development in the state, officials said.
The university is using the money to establish a wind turbine research center within its Great Lakes Energy Institute. The university and business partners want to erect three turbines of different sizes that would be used to test turbine innovations.
Sites for two taller turbines are under discussion.
The university also wants to install 4,500 square feet of solar panels on Adelbert Gym. The work will be done by Ohio Cooperative Solar, a recently formed company that aims to employ residents from neighborhoods around University Circle.
CWRU will pay 12 cents a kilowatt hour for the power, a bit above the cost of conventional power. The panels could supply 40 to 60 percent of the gym's electrical needs annually, said Eugene Matthews, director of the university's Department of Facilities Services.
