News

School officials hear Windsor student presentation on solar savings

By JEFF EPSTEIN
[email protected]
WINDSOR, Vt. — At a meeting of the Windsor Southeast Supervisory Union board March 25, Windsor High School senior Christina Gregory presented a proposal to put solar panels on the roof of the school to save money on electricity.

Gregory spoke as a student presenting her “capstone project,” but the subject of solar power was also clearly received as grist for the policy mill and as a potential cost-saving. Superintendent David Baker said school districts have been talking about renewable energy sources for years, and Hartland is using a hydroelectric system now. 

JeanMarie Oakman, principal of the Weathersfield School, also expressed enthusiasm about having solar energy at her school, and West Windsor and Hartland as well. 

In the course of her research Gregory spoke with utility Green Mountain Power and found that a roof-mounted solar system would cost $550,000 at most, she said.

This assumes the school would sign a power-purchase agreement with Green Mountain Power, which is an arrangement between a power producer and a power consumer. It would allow the school to avoid an up-front payment but pay a regular amount on a monthly basis that could be budgeted for. 

Such an agreement may also include net metering, which allows a customer credit for power generation that is not used immediately. The school would be both a producer and a consumer of power. As Gregory pointed out, solar generation is best in the summer, when school is usually not in session; during this period the school panels could be moving power into the grid and building up credits. Net metering would allow electric costs to be more even over the course of a year.

Solar energy may not be able to provide all of the school’s electrical needs, but could provide about 62 percent of it, and save as much as $90,684 in electric costs per year, Gregory said. These savings would lead to a recovery of the estimated cost of installation in about six years.

Gregory mentioned the panels could be installed elsewhere, such as other municipal land, but that may require a separate town meeting vote, since they wouldn’t be on school property.

Practically, there could be complications with placing solar panels on the school roof. For one thing, Windsor School has just embarked on a campaign to replace the roofs over time, both for structural reasons and stay up to date with the fire code. It’s not clear how a solar installation could work with that project.

In any case, a few solar contractors invited by Baker were in the audience of the WSESU meeting at which Gregory presented (which happened to follow meetings of the Mount Ascutney School District and its component Windsor and West Windsor boards). These included Ralph Meima and Victor Veve of Green Lantern Solar, Joel Stettenheim of Norwich Solar Technologies and Chris Lamonia of C3 Energy Capital.

These contractors said they had experience working with schools or other municipal facilities, and that federal tax credits for solar installations were still available but not for long.

If WSESU wants to pursue the idea as a serious project, the first step would be to put out a Request for Proposals to contractors. Responses would presumably come from the three companies in attendance and perhaps others as well.

No action was taken at the meeting, but a solar power proposal could be placed on the agenda at a future meeting.

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