Renewable energy Portfolio for Stephen Robert ‘62 Campus Center
The objective is to make a building on Brown university self-sufficient and leverage both the sunlight as well as student’s kinetic energy. Every day, hundreds of students enter the Stephen Robert ‘62 Campus Center. By putting piezoelectric flooring in both cafe areas, (Blue Room and the Underground) we can take advantage of the daily human traffic. Piezoelectric flooring absorbs the stress from a person’s step and converts this mechanical energy to electric energy using the vibrations created from stepping on the floor sensors. Moreover, to further expand our renewable energy portfolio for Campus Center, we want to add solar panels on the roof of the building. Using the solar flux for Providence, we will calculate how much energy we could produce from installing solar panels on the Campus Center as well as our payback period. These sources alone may not be enough to fully convert the Campus Center to a self-sufficient, energy efficient building, but they will at least somewhat reduce the demand for fossil-based energy on campus and create a basis from which we can start to develop alternative energy portfolios for other buildings on campus in the future.