Catholic University of America on Monday formally dedicated its new campus solar array in the nation’s capital, which the school calls the largest solar facility of its type in the country.
The array, on previously unused land on the edge of Catholic’s campus in the Brookland neighborhood, started producing power earlier this year. At 7.5 megawatts, it’s the largest ground-mounted urban solar farm in the country, the university said.
The project, developed by Maryland-based Standard Solar, is structured as a community solar facility, in which the power goes into the local electric grid, while Catholic and other nearby customers buy the credits from the generation.
Catholic sees the 25-acre array as a contribution both to Washington’s aggressive goal of 100 percent renewable energy by 2032 and to Pope Francis’ call for global action against climate change in his 2015 encyclical Laudato si’, or “Praise Be.”
