Distributed Solar-Plus-Storage Proposal for the University of Wisconsin–Madison

The self-named Dragons of Drexel entered the U.S. Department of Energy's Solar District Cup (Class of 2025–2026), a national collegiate competition where student teams model solar-plus-storage systems for real university and mixed-use districts. They finished second in their division.

Their project, the Badger Zero Initiative, proposed a 1,515.66 kW DC rooftop PV system across seven buildings in the University of Wisconsin–Madison's western campus corridor, with 1,011 kWh of lithium iron phosphate battery storage at five of those sites. The sizing wasn't guesswork, as the team used 8,760 hours of metered interval load data and calibrated each array to stay under its building's actual consumption, keeping grid export at zero. Across the portfolio, that works out to about 1,972 MWh per year, 50.3% of the district's electricity use, and roughly 787 metric tons of CO₂ avoided annually.

Financing runs through a third-party Power Purchase Agreement. A developer owns and operates the systems, claims the 30% federal ITC, and sells power back to UW at 8.5–9.5 cents per kWh. (Against MG&E's commercial rate of 12.1 cents) UW puts up no capital. By the team's model, that gap compounds to $1.5–3.0M in savings over the 20-year contract, and the project contributes toward UW's stated goals of 100% renewable electricity by 2030 and net-zero carbon by 2048.