Virginia School District Going Solar In A Big Way
June 29th, 2020 by Zachary Shahan[2]
A Virginia school district, the school district for Orange County Public Schools, has contracted Secure Futures Solar[3] to put solar panels on 8 of the school district’s facilities. They combine for a capacity of 2.5 megawatts (MW), quite a bit of power.
The solar power projects will create enough electricity that they could power 400 homes, but in this case will be producing about 50% of the 8 facilities’ electricity needs.
There’s no upfront cost to the school district in this deal. They are signing a 25-year “Solar Self Generation Agreement” with Secure Futures Solar for the electricity provided by the rooftop solar systems, at a lower cost than they would get from the regional utility.
“A total of eight solar arrays will be installed at seven different campuses and facilities,” a press release[4] about the projects notes. “Two arrays will be installed at Orange County High School, one array on the main building and another array on the field house. Then, one solar array will be installed at each of six other facilities: the Taylor Education Administration Complex, Prospect Heights Middle School, Orange Elementary School, Locust Grove Primary School, Locust Grove Elementary School and Locust Grove Middle School.
“With a capacity of 945 kilowatts, the solar panels installed at Locust Grove Middle School will be among the largest solar arrays placed on a rooftop in the state of Virginia and will generate approximately 90% of the electricity required by the school during the course of the year.”
In addition to the above, which is impressive enough, 3 school campuses in the district also had their roofs restored so that they would be prepared to have solar installed on them as well. Though, no contract is signed for that yet.
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References
- ^ Clean Power (cleantechnica.com)
- ^ Zachary Shahan (cleantechnica.com)
- ^ Secure Futures Solar (securefutures.solar)
- ^ press release (www.prnewswire.com)
- ^ Orange County Public Schools (cleantechnica.com)
- ^ Secure Futures Solar (cleantechnica.com)
- ^ solar power schools (cleantechnica.com)
- ^ solar schools (cleantechnica.com)
- ^ virginia (cleantechnica.com)
- ^ Virginia renewable energy (cleantechnica.com)
- ^ Virginia solar energy (cleantechnica.com)
- ^ Posts by Zachary Shahan (cleantechnica.com)