Butte College in Oroville, California is falling in line with the Golden State’s solar trend-setting ways, and is on track to to becoming the first “grid positive” campus in the United States. The school will in other words produce more energy than it needs to draw from the electric grid. The feat is possible thanks in large part to a $17 million solar installation that is spread out across several roofs and open ground areas throughout the campus. Currently underway, the project is expected to be fully installed by May 2011.

Butte College (above) is trying to become the largest collegiate producer of solar energy in the world.

When it’s complete, College President Diana Van Der Ploeg says the system will produce enough energy to cover the entire campus energy needs — and more. That extra energy will be used to power neighboring buildings: Butte College expects to provide extra juice to over 9,000 homes. The college has already fully installed 10,000 solar panels with a total capacity of 1.85 megawatts (MW) and the Board of Trustees recently approved the project’s third and final phase.

When all is said and done, the school’s solar energy system will be comprised of roughly 25,000 photovoltaic (PV) solar panels capable of producing over 6.381 million kilowatt hours (kWh) each year — an amount roughly equal to the annual demand of 580 American households.