How Much Would A Solar Panel To Power A Pretty Big School Be?

By , April 3, 2010

You’re probably looking in the neighborhood of a million dollars. The first thing you’ll do is audit the energy usage of the whole school. Let’s say you have a cheap PC that takes 300 watts. 300 watts of solar panel is several thousand dollars. For that, you could buy about 6 computers! Including one that’s only 20 watts. Now you only need a few hundred dollars worth of solar panel :)
So you go through the whole school like that. Make it efficient. Now you’re buying a MUCH smaller solar panel than you would have otherwise.
How well is the building insulated? Does it need new doors or windows? Get em and save a fortune heating the place. How about earth sheltering the roof? Thermal masses? Go through it all.
Does it use electric heat? Nope not with solar panels! Put in a solar-thermal system that is 50 times cheaper. Air conditioning? Retrofit to ground loop heat pumps and save a lot more energy.
Then when you’ve squeezed every watt out of the school’s energy use, you put up a (much smaller) solar panel for a great deal less money.


2 Responses to “How Much Would A Solar Panel To Power A Pretty Big School Be?”

  1. Wolf Harper says:

    Are you talking about size or cost?
    If size, the entire parking lot and all athletic field would not be large enough. A large school has peak demand of about 500kw (before the students plug in their portable electronic devices for charging.Cost would be $5,286, 244. 35 . This is all with today’s technology.

  2. Kengem says:

    You’re talking well into five figures in US$.

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