The University of Toledo has cut the ribbon on a 420-kilowatt solar array expansion on its Health Science campus, a project funded almost entirely by students.
The addition, located near the University of Toledo Medical Center, was paid for with $530,000 from the Student Green Fund — a committee of undergraduate and graduate students that has managed an optional $5-per-semester tuition contribution since 2017. Combined with a 330-kW first phase completed in 2020, the university now has 750 kilowatts of solar capacity. Both phases use thin-film panels from First Solar, which donated Series 5 modules for the first phase; Series 6 Plus modules were installed in the second.
The Student Green Fund has also backed high-efficiency hand dryers, refillable water-bottle stations and other campus sustainability projects over the years.
The project carries a local legacy: Harold McMaster, described as the father of commercialized solar, first produced cadmium telluride modules in Toledo in the late 1990s through his company Solar Cells Inc., which later became First Solar — now the world’s largest thin-film solar manufacturer, with a campus just outside the city.
