Thomas Breen file photo
Albertus Magnus' parking lot solar array: Just the beginning.
Solar panel canopies are coming to the parking lots of Hill Central and Beecher schools, as part of a city school district effort to become more climate friendly and energy efficient.
The Board of Education signed off on that solar canopy plan during its latest meeting.
The Board Tuesday evening unanimously approved a non-financial agreement with Greenskies Clean Energy to finance, design, install, and maintain the solar arrays in the parking lots of Hill Central and Beecher.
Click here to read the full agreement.
Tuesday’s school board meeting was held in-person at Barack Obama School on Farnham Avenue and online via Zoom and YouTube. Board members Justin Elicker, Matt Wilcox, and Darnell Goldson attended the meeting in-person, while board members Edward Joyner and Abie Benitez Zoomed into the meeting. Board members Yesenia Rivera and OrLando Yarborough were not in attendance Tuesday.
New Haven Public Schools (NHPS) Chief Operating Officer Thomas Lamb is collaborating with city Executive Director of Climate & Sustainability Steve Winter to help reduce the district’s energy costs and make it more energy efficient.
The agreement passed by the school board on Tuesday was a so-called “power purchase” agreement for the next 20 years with Greenskies Clean Energy LLC to install solar parking canopy systems at Hill Central and Beecher Schools.
The vendor will finance, design, install, and do maintenance on the solar parking carport canopies that will be built over Hill Central School and Beecher School parking spaces.
The vendor will then sell electricity produced by the parking lot solar arrays at each school to the city at a fixed rate for the full two-decade term of the power purchase agreement.
The agreement is non-financial because the cost of the installation will be paid for over time with the dollars that come in from the sale of electricity to the city, NHPS spokesperson Justin Harmon said.
The school board-approved agreement states: “The solar canopies are projected to generate enough electricity to power 20% of Hill Central’s electricity consumption and 33% of Beecher’s electricity consumption. With the conservative assumption that the historic rate of electricity bill increases continue at 3% annually, the solar canopies are forecast to save ~$275,000 over the term of the power purchase agreement.”
Project rendering for Beecher school.
The project will come at no cost to the school district, Winter clarified at an Oct. 2 meeting of the Board of Education’s Finance and Operations Committee.
Lamb said that the solar arrays are a big part of the district’s ability to reduce its carbon impact.
The solar canopies over parking lots are a great sustainable way to use land, Winter said. They also protect lots and cars from weather like snow and offer shading in the summer.
Lamb said the project construction is expected to take three to four months. The goal, to avoid impact during the school year, is to schedule the installation during the 2024 summer break because the lots will be shut down for work.
At the Oct. 2 committee meeting, school board member OrLando Yarborough asked what repairs and maintenance are included in the agreement.
Lamb responded that the district or city will not own the solar array equipment and therefore under the ownership of the vendor, all maintenance and repairs will be done by the vendor.
At the end of the 20-year lease term, the city will have the option to buy the equipment, have it removed, or extend the lease agreement for an additional five years.
If the equipment is removed, the city will not have to pay removal costs, Winter said.
Yarborough also asked if the guaranteed maintenance will include snow removal for the district to get maximal use of the solar arrays. Winter said the agreement does not include snow removal work but added that the arrays will be tilted, which may help to shed snow more quickly.
The agreement includes preventative maintenance or repairs needed for the equipment including in potential cases of vandalism or car crashes.
Project rendering for Hill Central school.
Lamb concluded that he is working to do a study on all district buildings to inspect for solar feasibility.
He said one key issue he has come across so far is many buildings’ roofs are at the end of their life and/or need repairs.
He provided the example that at Hillhouse High School the roof replacement project has run into an unanticipated extreme cost for removing its current rooftop solar array to do the roof replacement, which has the added cost of also storing the equipment during the replacement process.
In future contracts, Lamb said he aims to have the vendor accommodate this situation or he will seek out installations on only newer roofs.
Board member Matt Wilcox added that it “would be a really neat bonus” to have public school students learn about real-world problems like these in a math or science class. He suggested classrooms have students work to show the money savings or power generated with the solar arrays.
Lamb said he is currently working with Tesla, which owns several arrays around the district, to add a savings dashboard to the public school’s website.
During Tuesday’s full board meeting, Darnell Goldson asked: “How do we guarantee that rates will remain competitive throughout the 20-year agreement?”
Lamb responded that his team has no way to know what things will be like 10 – 15 years from now but clarified that if rates change to the point where it’s not beneficial for the district, he plans to include in the contract that the district can renegotiate or dissolve the agreement.
Another benefit of the canopies is that they will reduce the heat island effect of the parking lot by shading the asphalt.
A-pros-pos Mr. Goldson’s question, when I staffed the legislature’s Energy Committee, I periodically told members that I could not predict energy costs. If I had been able to do so, I could have played the futures market and retired long before I did. But this looks like a typical power purchase agreement.