FORT COLLINS — CSU has reached an agreement with a Boulder solar-installation company to add solar generation on campus, a university official said Thursday.

How large an array Namaste Solar might install for the university will depend on the structure of the City of Fort Collins' solar-energy buying program, said Carol Dollard, energy engineer at CSU. That's because the university would sell electricity generated from the array to the city.

"Our electric load is bigger than anybody's in town, so we want to get a chunk of it offset with a nice, clean solar system," she said.

Plans for additional solar capacity come as the city develops a program that will allow institutions to sell excess electricity generated by their arrays to the city's utility. The city is considering soliciting bids from businesses interested in participating in the program.

The program stems from a mandate by the state requiring utilities serving more than 40,000 customers to generate 10 percent of their electricity from renewable energy.

CSU's potential new solar array would add to the more than 5.5 megawatts of solar electricity capacity at the university, most of which comes from an array at Christman