The Bloomberg Center at Cornell Tech Campus in Manhattan Now Powered by the Sun

June 12, 2018

Original article

Solar generation at the Cornell Tech campus in NYC began live operations on Friday, May 11. The system deploys 2,093 panels over two buildings and will generate 995 MWhs of electricity each year - all powered by the sun.

Distributed Sun ("DSUN") was selected in 2012 to work with Cornell Tech and construction manager Barr & Barr and advise on renewable energy technologies for the campus. Cornell and DSUN collaborated to design and develop the solar capability for the Cornell Tech campus and on the campus in Ithaca.

On Roosevelt Island, DSUN served as Cornell's partner, coordinating design, engineering and development activities with the builders and architects of The Bloomberg Center and the neighboring Tata Innovation Center: Forest City New York, Morphosis and Weiss/Manfredi. DSUN advised on selecting the builder, EnterSolar, and the solar panels, by Solaria, to optimize the installation, and worked with Cornell to manage the construction stages."Cornell appreciates the engineering expertise and electrical systems guidance that Distributed Sun provided as we developed and opened the first phase of our brand-new Roosevelt Island campus," said Diana Allegretti, Director of Design and Construction at Cornell Tech. "Their teams supported Cornell to accomplish the best design and electrical engineering to fit these unique solar rooftop canopies."

Cornell Tech in Manhattan
Cornell Tech campus design mock-up of building exterior.  The Cornell Tech campus is located on Roosevelt Island in New York City.

Cornell Tech is a campus built for the digital age. It brings together faculty, business leaders, tech entrepreneurs and students in a catalyzing learning environment that aims to reinvent the way we live in the digital age. Cornell Tech was named the winner of the City's Applied Sciences competition in 2011, and the first phase of the campus opened September 2017. The first phase includes three buildings - the Emma and Georgina Bloomberg Center, the first academic building, the Tata Innovation Center, where companies locate on campus, and The House, a residential building for students, faculty and staff. The campus features innovative architectural designs that implement green building best practices to maximize energy efficiency and minimize the campus carbon footprint.The Bloomberg Center and the Tata Innovation Center buildings host high-performance solar canopies, contributing to the aspiration of getting to net zero energy usage at The Bloomberg Center. These arrays are integral to the university's sustainability goals within the built environment. High energy yield solar panels provide attractive appearance, excellent value and reliable performance. With its strong commitment to clean energy innovation, Cornell Tech has raised the bar for new construction.

Cornell Tech in Manhattan
The Tech campus features integrated sustainability design across campus buildings.

"Distributed Sun is proud to support the development of solar on these two iconic new buildings that showcase Cornell's commitment to renewable energy," says Jeff Weiss, Cornell '79 and Managing Director of Distributed Sun. "The solar canopies balance clean energy with aesthetic design at great heights in the middle of the East River. It is a privilege to direct exacting engineering and equipment selection, and contribute to the design process in support of Cornell's work to achieve its goal of zero energy usage."


Details from original article:

About Cornell University: Cornell University is a world-class research institution known for the breadth and rigor of its curricula, and an academic culture dedicated to preparing students to be well-educated and well-rounded citizens of the world. Its faculty, staff and students believe in the critical importance of knowledge-both theoretical and applied-as a means of improving the human condition and solving the world's problems. With campuses in Ithaca, New York, New York City, and Doha, Qatar, Cornell is a private, Ivy League research university and the land-grant institution of New York State.

About Cornell Tech: Cornell Tech brings together faculty, business leaders, tech entrepreneurs and students in a catalytic environment to produce visionary results grounded in significant needs that will reinvent the way we live in the digital age. The Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute embodies the academic partnership between the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and Cornell University on the Cornell Tech campus.

From 2012-2017, the campus was temporarily located in Google's New York City building. In fall 2017, 30 world-class faculty and about 300 graduate students moved to the first phase of Cornell Tech's permanent campus on Roosevelt Island, continuing to conduct groundbreaking research, collaborate extensively with tech-oriented companies and organizations and pursue their own startups. When fully completed, the campus will include two million square feet of state-of-the-art buildings, over two acres of open space, and will be home to more than 2,000 graduate students and hundreds of faculty and staff.

About Distributed Sun: Distributed Sun (DSUN) has developed, owned and operated solar generation facilities in 11 US states since its founding in 2010 - when it invented the Solar Energy Investment Company (SEIC) model. Since then, it formed nine sponsor and tax equity and development funds under this structure that have each met or exceeded their performance yield targets. DSUN's SEICs have developed and invested in residential, commercial, industrial, utility and community solar systems representing more than $250 million in capital expenditures and a half-a-billion dollars in revenues. DSUN founded the truSolar® standards initiative and customer on-boarding portal, created the beEdison® SaaS platform and hosts the annual New Energy Summit in Washington, DC. The company recently completed development on SUN8, the largest community solar portfolio in New York - which will create over 1,000 jobs and serve 15,000 residential customers beginning in 2018. DSUN recently formed SUN10, a big data infrastructure fund that will deploy $750 million into Energy-as-a-Service solutions over the next 3 years.