Standing at the gateway to the Ohio State University’s (OSU) nascent Carmenton campus, the 64,000-square-foot Energy Advancement and Innovation Center (EAIC) is about one-fifth the size of a neighboring research building, but “it can hold its own on the site,” says Brendan Flaherty, a senior project manager with the institution’s facilities, design, and construction group. For starters, the luminous structure of glass, polycarbonate, and precast concrete significantly departs from the campus vernacular of brick rectangular buildings, he points out.
Even more distinguishing is the EAIC’s 281-kilowatt array of 704 photovoltaic (PV) panels, held 9½ feet above its roofline in a ragged-edged canopy that overhangs its footprint. Combined with a nearly two-story-tall “Block O”—OSU’s logo—rendered in flexible white LED strip lights, the center embodies its mission as a living laboratory and incubator for academia and practitioners to research renewable energy and direct current (DC) power.
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