STRUM — For the School District of Eleva-Strum, their new solar array sitting in front of the high school is not just for show.
Superintendent Cory Kulig said it marks the completion of a roughly $150,000, two-year project working with CESA 10 to get the technology installed on campus.
“It’s the celebration of that project coming to fruition,” Kulig said Thursday. “From the early discussions to deciding to invest in this as a school district. And, looking at the different benefits and pros and cons of solar energy and things like that.
“Now, we’re at the point where we’re excited for it to be up and fully functional, and to see continued success in the future with the utilization of it.”
Generating a total of 130,000 kilowatt hours per year, a series of 184 ground-mounted solar panels installed in front of the Eleva-Strum High School started construction in the spring and finished up in the summer.
For comparison, an average household roughly uses about 7,500 kilowatt hours per year, meaning the school’s panels could power roughly 17 to 20 homes. As a school typically uses a lot of energy to operate through the school year, Eleva-Strum anticipates that the solar panels will provide 20% of the district’s annual energy cost and pay itself back in eight to nine years based on current energy prices.
“From an educational impact, it’ll provide an opportunity for our kids to learn,” Kulig said. “When they learn about renewable sustainable energy they’ll have a living laboratory on site to be able to monitor, learn about and study the data and the ins and outs of solar energy.”
CESA 10, the nonprofit educational service agency which provides facility management to districts, operated as project manager to help with the installation effort.
“I think one of the biggest things with schools is that they’re really trying to lead by example in their community and show that these kinds of projects are accessible,” said Heather Feigum, executive director of Facilities Management at CESA 10. “Even in rural Wisconsin, they’re able to make a good investment like this.
“It also shows the students that they’re able to be involved in these kinds of careers: the people who install them, the electric co-op that helps the interconnection and all of those kinds of things… It really improves and helps with career and technical education, as well as reducing the energy consumption of the building, demanding less on the electrical grid and helping improve their overall sustainability.”
As CESA 10 has helped with the installation of solar panels at several other schools in their area, Feigum said there certainly has been momentum gaining in the move to install renewable energy sources like solar. Schools may be becoming more aware of their energy usage, and the addition of technology like this helps the overall sustainability impact of the district’s building.
The ground-mounted solar panels installed have an estimated lifespan of 30 years, taking into account the weather conditions they may face outside. Even after that time, Kulig said the solar panels will likely still operate but their efficiency will go down, and changing the panels can be done at a significantly lower cost than it took to initially install them.
Now that it is complete, many are excited for what it can bring to Eleva-Strum, with Kulig saying, “Everybody likes sunny days, but knowing that we were generating some income savings from that sun that shines each day —it brightens each day a little bit more, I would say.”
“Being able to complete a project like this has been a really good accomplishment, but the work is not done,” Feigum said. “They have a lot to do in order to educate their students and make sure that they are using this as a really effective tool to get the word out of reducing energy consumption and, as Cory mentioned, being innovative in their community.”