Staff
J.W. Walker School and Fort High are going solar.
J.W. Walker saw a 5.4 kW photovoltaic system installed this past fall, and finally were “hooked up” back into this grid and commissioned on Dec. 30.
Meanwhile, Fort High’s solar panel project will be bigger than the one at J.W. Walker, with roughly 116 kW of power at capacity produced once they are installed and fully operational by the end of August.
“The renewable energy projects are exciting,” Raymond Roy, manager of plant operations for the Rainy River District School Board, said about the installation of the solar panels and system at two of the schools.
The highlight of this project isn’t just the renewable energy, stressed Roy. Rather, it’s the learning opportunity students will have because of it.
“The big thing is the student impact, with us being able to integrate that technology into the curriculum,” Roy explained.
“We believe our students will be more engaged and more focused on learning about sustainability because they’re going to be able to see this live data.”
Already at Walker, and eventually at Fort High, the systems will have a web connection and web portal that reports the data, which Roy said will be available to all students across the board and in every classroom.
“Students will have access to all the live data, all the weather data, all the actual energy that’s being produced by the systems, so they’ll be able to monitor that and just see how it all works,” he remarked.
Roy said $130,000 in funding for J.W. Walker’s solar panel system comes from a program called the “Green Schools Pilot Initiative,” noting they also were able to get funding for the project from the Ontario Solar Thermal Heating Incentive and Echo Energy.
Meanwhile, the $1.2 million being put into Fort High’s solar panel system has been totally funded by a provincial program called “Renewable Energy Funding For Schools.”
Besides the educational opportunities, Roy said the public board also reaps a benefit from having the systems installed—energy produced from the panels will be sold back to the grid.
“We’re going to have a clean energy source, we’re obviously going to have lower utility bills, there’s a revenue side to the solar projects,” he enthused.
“We’re looking at a total revenue of around $110,000 per year just from those two solar systems.”
The solar panels are one of several environmental initiatives by the local public board.
The Energy and Facility Renewal Program started back in 2006, Roy noted, and included “many, many” upgrades of lighting, mechanical, controls, and building up lots of water measures.
“That was a huge financial benefit for the board because the cumulative savings over the life of that project so far is over $600,000, so it’s really, really big financially,” he stressed, adding there also has been a positive impact on the learning and teaching environment in the schools since these upgrades also mean changes to lighting, heating, and indoor air quality.
Another way the board is reducing power consumption is by undertaking “virtualization” with its computer servers—by placing multiple virtual machines on one physical machine—which reduces power consumption and the demands for cooling.
