With Rooftop Solar Prices So Low, Virginia Schools Can’t Pass Up the Savings

By Will Driscoll, cross posted from Power for the People VA

With today’s low solar prices, schools can save money by installing rooftop solar, and use the savings to improve education.  Schools in three Virginia communities are leading the way, achieving net energy savings after commissioning 1.7 megawatts of solar systems in 2016. Student leadership, power purchase agreements, and one outright purchase helped make it happen.

In Albemarle County, students helped drive a decision to install 1.1 megawatts of solar on six schools.  Back in 2014, Sutherland Middle School students gave pro-solar testimony in Richmond at a hearing on Dominion Virginia Power’s resource plans.  Meanwhile, students at Monticello High School wrote to the school board to make the case for solar.  The school division last year added rooftop solar to these schools and four others, by entering a power purchase agreement (PPA) with solar developer Secure Futures in Staunton.  The school division projects savings of at least $80,000 over the life of the 20-year PPA agreement, based on a projected annual increase of two percent in Dominion Virginia Power’s electricity rates.  (Photos below.)

Arlington’s new Discovery Elementary School is jam-packed with 497 kilowatts of solar panels.  That much solar was possible under Virginia’s net metering law because the school is heated using electric-powered geothermal heat pumps—so the school can net meter not only its air conditioning and lighting load but also its electric heating load.  The school district paid $1,369,500 for the solar system, funded through the same bond used to build the school.  The cost will be paid off in 14 years, assuming a two percent annual increase in energy costs, and the solar panels should produce free electricity for many years after that.  (That 14-year amortization is based on the bond’s interest rate of 2.63 percent and full-year 2016 energy cost avoidance of $101,000, increasing by two percent per year.)  The school is designed as a net-zero-energy building, and ran at net-zero in 2016. (Photo below.)

Lexington City Schools, which operates just three schools, added a 91.5 kW solar system to the Lylburn Downing Middle School. “No matter how big or how small a school division you are—and that translates into real life, no matter how big a corporation or how small—you can make an impact on the environment” explained School Principal Jason White in a video interview with Washington and Lee University’s Rockbridge Report.  Lexington School Superintendent Scott Jefferies added that the solar project “speaks beyond how much you can actually save financially—more so … that you’re actually trying to do something good for the environment.” Like Albemarle County, Lexington financed this solar system through a PPA with Secure Futures.

Looking Ahead:  To accelerate placement of cost-saving solar systems on schools—and to show our children that we care about their future—Virginia legislators could extend the right to enter into power purchase agreements (PPAs) beyond the current pilot program in the Dominion Virginia Power territory.  The legislature could also allow customers to net meter more solar-generated electricity than they consume, because we need all the solar we can get, and because Dominion claims it has difficulty siting solar generation.  And soon, legislators will need to increase the net metering limit, now fixed at one percent of total electricity consumption.

Virginia can produce 32 percent of its electricity from rooftop solar, according to a National Renewable Energy Laboratories report.  Virginia’s 2,093 public schools, with unshaded roofs ideal for low-cost commercial scale solar, represent a promising component of that potential.  Our progress in 2016 moved us eight schools closer to that target.

Albemarle County Schools–Photos 

Arlington’s Discovery Elementary School–Photo