The new solar array at Clarksville, Tennessee-based Austin Peay State University (APSU) isn’t huge. In fact, at a mere 2 kilowatts, it’s not something to write home about. But what it represents regarding APSU’s commitment to, and furtherance of, solar energy can hardly be estimated.

Sure, the solar array will cause a meter in the APSU Environmental Education Center (EEC) to spin backward, sending electricity to the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) via the Clarksville Department of Electricity, or CDE. But the average homeowner who has installed a couple of solar panels can do the same.

The electricity produced will go first to a nearby APSU classroom, but when it isn’t needed, it will serve as a credit to the university’s utility bill. And there are a couple of other initiatives, like turning cooking grease into biofuel, that also come out of the EEC fund.

What’s important about APSU’s array is the fact that students actually voted to tax themselves $10 a semester to pay for it (and other renewable energy incentives). Imagining a bunch of teenagers forgoing that Friday night pizza to buy solar panels sort of freezes the old hard-drive, but that’s exactly what they did last year.

The initiative is the result of a freshman brochure that informs incoming students of APSU’s energy mix, which is – unfortunately – almost 100-percent coal-fired, since it comes from TVA. The fund also enables APSU to participate in TVA’s Green Power Switch program, which aims to replace a lot of that dirty coal with clean, “green” renewable energy sources like solar.

The brochure goes on to mention some appalling facts: in 2001, TVA coal plants released 2,420 pounds of mercury, a neurotoxin; in 2002, Tennessee was ranked 2nd in the nation in terms of dirty air; and 34 million Southerners breathe that toxic air.

After excoriating mountaintop removal coal mining, the brochure delves into security (60-percent of petroleum is imported) and economics (the rising price of energy), and finally lands comfortably on the fact that APSU – the fastest-growing school in the Tennessee Board of Regents system – is using the EEC fund to demonstrate its environmental responsibility.

It’s a bit self-congratulatory, but right on the money. APSU used some of the funds to buy four electric cars to replace gasoline-powered vehicles. The open-air vehicles, from Global Electric Motorcars, go 30 miles on a single charge, and can easily transport two (or four) people.

But perhaps the most relevant solar technology aspect of APSU’s existence is its partnering with Michigan-based polysilicon production firm Hemlock Semiconductor, a joint venture of Dow Corning Corporation and two Japan-based firms, Shin Etsu Handotai Co., Ltd. and Mitsubishi Materials Corporation. Hemlock is donating $2 million to APSU to buy laboratory equipment for the new chemical engineering technology building, which is scheduled to open for the 2010 fall semester. In exchange, APSU will design an entirely new curriculum to deliver an Associate of Applied Science (AAS) applicable to the work that Hemlock is doing in polysilicon development and manufacturing.

It’s the sort of synergy between education and industry that insures solar a place in all future energy supply equations, and will help put the cost of solar on a parity with environmentally lethal forms of generation like coal.