Green Options

What does it look like when a school goes solar? Students in Gerlach, NV, found out firsthand yesterday when they celebrated the installation of 90-kilowatt PV system at their campus in northern Nevada. The system will supply almost all of the energy needs of the three-building campus that serves 83 K-12 students.

“The solar panels will give our students good insight into the different ways we can address global warming issues with renewable energy,” said Gerlach Principal Carol Kaufmann. The system is the result of a collaboration between the Washoe County School District, MMA Renewable Ventures, SCHOTT Solar, Sierra Pacific Power, and the infamous Burning Man festival. The ground-mounted system will save the district approximately $20,000 per year.

Last week, I talked about the Green California Schools Summit happening this week in Pasedena. This week, I interviewed one of the panelists who’ll be speaking. Mike Hall is the Chief Marketing Officer at Borrego Solar, a California-based solar integrator that works extensively on solar installations in schools.

ECP: Tell us about Borrego Solar and their work with schools going solar.

MH: Borrego Solar is a solar integrator, so we’re the last part of the machine, and what we do is provide turnkey solar electric solutions for our customers. We have two groups, one is called the commercial project group and they’re the ones that service the education industry and work with schools on developing solar projects. They also do commercial and industrial and government work, and then we have a division that does single-family homes. We’re very much focusing on trying to provide not just solar solutions for schools, but better solar solutions for schools. When we looked at the schools, the education industry, and school construction, we’ve been reading some studies that show that the single biggest contributor to new building construction is the construction and retrofitting of schools. If you look at the overall energy issues and the various contributors to carbon emissions, there are really two big sources. One of course is cars and transportation, which our company is not really taking on head on, the second is buildings, which we’re trying to tackle, and if you look at buildings, if you look at new construction, schools are the biggest contributor. So that’s a big reason why we’re focused on schools.

Secondary reasons are to kind of change things, the opportunity to teach students that there are alternatives to the existing fossil fuel-based energy sources. So we’re trying to work with schools. One of the things we’ve seen with schools is that there have been a fair amount, a very tiny percentage, but a fair amount of schools that have gone solar. A large amount of those schools have really not themselves been properly educated about solar and have not had enough support from their integrator to take that next step and not just treat it like an appliance on their roof that is hopefully saving them some money, but that they’re teaching the kids about what it is and use it as a demonstration piece to show that you can power your buildings and power your life with renewable energy. So that’s kind of where we’re coming from, and this session that we’re leading at the Green Schools Summit is really about enabling schools to go solar and some of the things that have happened very recently in the financial products market and then also on the technology side that are really making it much easier for them to go solar.