In San Luis Obispo, which sits on the shore of the Pacific Ocean midway between San Francisco and the Mexican border, school district officials are hoping to erect carports topped with solar photovoltaic panels to take advantage of abundant California sunlight.
In California, such structures are called ramadas, and topping them with solar panels is an excellent way to generate clean, renewable energy via solar insolation while also providing shade during hot weather, when the temperature inside a standing vehicle can reach lethal ranges. In addition, most ramadas would have solar-powered lights underneath to provide safety lighting at night.
The San Luis Obispo School District still needs to garner approval for its plan, which targets the local high school and seven other school sites. Because the plan won’t cost taxpayers anything, it doesn’t require a referendum, but the plans for such ramadas will need approval from the state’s Building Standards Commission.
The upside is the $6 to $8 million in electricity savings; the downside is that some or all trees in the parking lots at the existing sites may have to be removed, and some residents have already started protesting.
The district’s agreement, through San Luis Obispo-based REC Solar, provides a power purchase agreement (PPA) by which the district buys the power generated from the $14-million project, at a rate similar to what they would pay to Pacific Gas & Electric, or PG&E, the regional electric utility. The cost savings comes from projected future rate increases for PG&E, while the cost of electricity from the panels remains the same. In addition, electricity generated during the summer, when schools are not in session, can be sold back to the grid for additional savings.
REC Solar and its project partner, Baltimore, Maryland-based SunEdison, would design, install, own and maintain the panels, which will provide about 85 percent of the district’s current needs. In return, the two entities would get all the applicable solar energy credits and incentives currently offered by federal and state and regional governments, including any renewable energy credits and a depreciation allowance on the equipment. It is, in fact, these incentives, which make such PPAs financially feasible. SunEdison is essentially the financing arm of REC Solar.
REC Solar already has 694 kilowatts installed at four schools in the Poway Unified School District in San Diego County, a project completed in 2008 using Mitsubishi solar panels. The company also has installations in Hawaii, at two Costco locations in Kauai and Kona totaling 1360 kilowatts.