School Headed Toward Producing Half Its Own Electricity

On top of the ice rink at Pingree School there's now more than 700 solar panels, all working together to produce nearly half the electricity needed by the rink.

It is the first half of what the school plans will be a complete project next year that will mean about half the school's electricity needs will come from solar panels on the roof of the Highland Street school's buildings, according to Jock Burns, Pingree's director of finance and operations.

In addition to saving on the electric bill, the panels become a lesson for students, who can monitor the panel's electrical production from an online monitoring center. That will be incorporated into the science curriculum and Burns said the school's environmental club will also get involved. And at some point the monitoring center may be available on Pingree's website, Burns said.

The 770 solar panels on the roof of the rink produce about half the rink's electricity, which is turn is about half the school's electricity use. Next fall, when an athletic building is complete across the driveway from the rink, the south-facing side of the roof will also include solar panels.

"It has a good solar orientation," Burns said.

The panels were installed by an outside company, Solect, which installs the equipment and owns it for the first 15 years. Pingree enters into an "power purchase agreement" with the company to buy electricity from the company at discount rates.

Solect uses federal and state tax credits to lower the cost of the project and those credits are not available to non-profit companies such as Pingree, according to Steve Bianchi, one of the company's equity partners. So it installs and runs the operation with an agreement with the school. It has similar projects with several churches in the state too, he said.

Burns said the school had been looking at "sustainability opportunities" for a while and solicited proposals from several companies before reaching an agreement with Solect.

If the panels produce more electricity than the school needs it can sell it "back to the grid," Burns said, although that has not happened yet.

So far, though, the panels have produced more electricity than projected. It has been up and running since Feb. 12.