Understanding Future Uses of Roofspace and Defining An Early Path to Profitable Roof Estate Investing
September 18th, 2014
Via the Solar Energy Industries Association, an interesting assessment of how solar energy helps to power schools in communities across America:
Any building with a large, flat rooftop is a prime candidate for a solar installation. And one particular large, flat roof that’s ubiquitous in the U.S. is on schools.
According to a new report by the Energy Department and the Solar Foundation — the research arm of the Solar Energy Industries Association, a solar trade organization — if schools took advantage of their full potential for solar, they would add 5.4 gigawatts to the country’s solar capacity. That’s just over a third of the 16 gigawatts of total capacity America currently boasts. That would be enough to power roughly one million homes, and a carbon emissions reduction equivalent to taking around one million passenger vehicles off the road.
The study also provided an interactive map of the nation’s schools, allowing users to identify which school buildings would be the best candidates for solar.
There are currently 125,000 K-12 schools in the country, and 3,727 of them already have solar systems installed. More than 3,000 of those were installed in the last six years — an indication of solar’s swift rise in the United States. After crunching the numbers, the report determined that another 40,000 to 72,000 could also install a system cost-effectively.
Furthermore, the electricity generated by the 3,727 school solar systems already in place adds up to $77.8 million in utility bills per year, freeing up enough money to pay 2,200 new teachers a starting annual salary of $35,672. According to the analysis, 450 individual school districts who currently lack solar could save themselves $1,000,000 each over a 30-year period by installing a solar system.
Along with electricity, rooftop space on schools could also be taken up with solar thermal systems to heat water, saving the schools on the water bills as an alternative to their electricity bills. Also on the water front, solar uses far less fresh water than traditional fossil fuel power or nuclear — the power plants often require large and regular supplies of fresh water to keep themselves cool. So increasing the nation’s current solar capacity by a third would free more freshwater supplies, in a world at increasing risk for water scarcity.
The report even points out that the solar systems could provide teachers with an opportunity to give their students a hands-on educational experience ion science, technology, engineering and related subjects.
Key Findings:
- An analysis performed for this report found that 450 individual school districts could each save more than $1,000,000 over 30 years by installing a solar PV system.
- Of the 125,000 schools in the country, between 40,000 and 72,000 can “go solar” cost-effectively.
- There are 3,752 K-12 schools in the United States with solar installations, meaning nearly 2.7 million students attend schools with solar energy systems.
- The 3,727 PV systems at all U.S. schools with solar installations have a combined capacity of 490 megawatts (MW), and generate roughly 642,000 megawatt-hours (MWh) of electricity each year.
- The electricity generated in one year by all 3,727 PV systems represents a combined $77.8 million per year in utility bills ‒ an average of almost $21,000 per year per school. This combined energy value is roughly equivalent to 155,000 tablet computers or nearly 2,200 new teachers’ salaries per year.[1]
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Educated at Yale University (Bachelor of Arts - History) and Harvard (Master in Public Policy - International Development), Monty Simus has held a lifelong interest in environmental and conservation issues, primarily as they relate to freshwater scarcity, renewable energy, and national park policy. Working from a water-scarce base in Las Vegas with his wife and son, he is the founder of Water Politics, an organization dedicated to the identification and analysis of geopolitical water issues arising from the world’s growing and vast water deficits, and is also a co-founder of SmartMarkets, an eco-preneurial venture that applies web 2.0 technology and online social networking innovations to motivate energy & water conservation. He previously worked for an independent power producer in Central Asia; co-authored an article appearing in the Summer 2010 issue of the Tulane Environmental Law Journal, titled: “The Water Ethic: The Inexorable Birth Of A Certain Alienable Right”; and authored an article appearing in the inaugural issue of Johns Hopkins University's Global Water Magazine in July 2010 titled: “H2Own: The Water Ethic and an Equitable Market for the Exchange of Individual Water Efficiency Credits.”