Work by SUNY New Paltz Engineering Students Triggers Solar Power Generation at Stewart Air National Guard Base
01/29/2010
In the fall semester of 2008, engineering students Brian Morris, James Green and Breandon St. John completed a Senior Design Project entitled “Improving Energy Usage at the Steward Air National Guard Base”. The project was cross-supervised by SUNY New Paltz Engineering professor Michael Otis and by Bill Cox, en engineer from the company TSEC (The Solar Energy Consortium).
As it turned out, this preliminary study by SUNY New Paltz students led to a 4 Million-dollar federal allocation that will enable local companies, such as TSEC and Applied Materials, to build a gigantic “solar farm” at the Stewart National Guard Base to produce electricity from sunlight. The solar farm will be able to produce as much as 3 quarters of a million watts (!) of electricity in daylight hours.
The money allocation was announced in a recent meeting at the Stewart Base by Congressman Maurice Hinchey. According to Mr. Hinchey, this power generator will be “the largest solar installation in the Hudson Valley”. Among the meeting attendees were Vincent Cozzolino, TSEC President/CEO (and a SUNY New Paltz alumnus), Rana Mookherjee of Applied Materials and Dan Jelski, Dean of the SUNY New Paltz School of Science and Engineering (For more information, you can read The Poughkeepsie Journal).
The picture shows, from left to right, Congressman Maurice Hinchey, Rana Mookherjee (Applied Materials) and Vincent Cozzolino (TSEC) announcing the 4-Million dollar allocation.
The Electrical and Computer Engineering Department wishes to congratulate Brian, James and Breandon for their pioneer efforts, which resulted in a dream-come true. Their work will be continued by future New Paltz engineering students, who will be collecting and interpreting data from the Stewart solar array once in production.
The picture shows, from left to right, James Green, Brian Morris and Breandon St. John, when they presented their Senior Design Project back in December 2008. Brian is pointing at a small model of an airport hangar illuminated from solar power... Their little model has become a reality and multiplied by millions!
