Solar Savvy Beats Snuggies
EAST LYME, Conn. – This spring, East Lyme High School is growing something unique in its new rooftop garden: organic electricity.
The 481-kilowatt, photovoltaic solar system includes a “garden” of more than 2,900 solar panels, from which the school started drawing power for the first time on March 9. The system’s sunlight harvest is expected to account for 25 to 30 percent of ELHS’s annual electricity needs, saving it approximately $1.2 million over the next 20 years.
“Even on a cloudy day, we’re still pulling plenty of electricity from it,” East Lyme Public Schools business manager Don Meltabarger said while surveying the array of panels atop the main building. “I’m curious to see what our first electric bill will look like.”
The project is the result of a contract between ELHS and Constellation Energy, a nationally recognized and publicly traded company that has financed and built more than $1 billion in energy related projects to date. Under their power purchase agreement, Constellation owns and maintains the solar equipment for the next 20 years and sells the energy it produces to the school at a rate of 12 cents per kilowatt hour (kWh).
To put this figure in perspective, Meltabarger said ELHS currently pays Connecticut Light & Power 18 cents per kWh and uses about 2.4 million a year. Saving more than 30 percent on the energy the school buys from Constellation will add up greatly over time, likely saving the school about $12,000 in the first year alone.
All told, the project cost $4.1 million and was financed entirely by Constellation Energy, less a $1.8 million grant the company won from the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund if they completed the work by Dec. 31, 2008. Constellation receives a 30 percent federal tax credit and state tax benefits on the work, as well, and then transfers ownership to ELHS after the 20-year contract expires, when the grid will still have 80 percent of its operational capacity.
An added bonus is that ELHS teachers and students have a whole new solar system to study and learn from, complete with a Web site that provides real-time reports of the system’s electrical output. The Connecticut Clean Energy Fund’s grant includes a provision that requires teachers to build the project’s function and data into their students’ curriculum.
“We’ll tie in the Web site’s energy collection capabilities; many of our math projects and problems will be based on the data we collect from the grid,” said ELHS science teacher Laura Rotchford. “The whole concept of think global, act local—that’s what our students will be seeing firsthand.”
Meltabarger said the solar panel project has been on East Lyme’s to-do list for years but was tabled until the school’s roof was replaced to ensure it could bear the weight of the new system. ELHS finally got 125,000 square feet of new roofing in 2007, which enabled project organizers to finally move forward. The new panels will actually help preserve the life of the replaced roof, as well.
The solar garden is one of many steps East Lyme plans to take toward becoming more environmentally friendly. The school’s Ecology Club just received a $5,000 grant toward green initiatives for an honorable mention it received in a video and essay competition, and Meltabarger said the school is exploring everything from natural light harvesting and geothermal energy to things as simple as composting lunchroom leftovers.
In the meantime, the new solar system is enough to give ELHS bragging rights, as it is the largest solar installation at a public school in Connecticut, according to Meltabarger. It certainly beats the fictitious plan announced in the school’s newspaper on April Fool’s Day, claiming ELHS had decided to not turn on the heat for an entire year and, instead, go green by purchasing a large quantity of Snuggies to keep its students and faculty warm and save money on graduation gowns.
For more information or to see the real-time project Web site, visit ELHS’s Web site or www.fatspaniel.com and look under “live sites” for the East Lyme location.
This article originally appeared in the Lyme Times and is available here: http://zip06.theday.com/blogs/lyme_times/archive/2009/04/09/solar-savvy-east-lyme-high-school-turns-on-the-solar-power.aspx
