John Paul II sign and solar panels. (Kate Otterbein / XFM News)
It’s been almost a year since the solar panels at John Paul II Catholic Secondary School have been up and running. Since then, they have been surpassing expectations.
“The solar panels are currently generating more electricity than was expected. I’m not sure if carbon neutral is actually fully achievable, but that’s the idea,” says the school’s Principal, Peter Cassidy.
The solar panels generate electricity, which is sent back to a battery system. The battery system itself is made by Tesla.
“The battery system stores energy from the grid during off-hours and redistributes it to the school during the day when it’s needed.”
Cassidy says that being completely carbon neutral isn’t possible for the school, as natural gas is still needed in some cases.
“The kids use gas in the science labs, for example. There’s no way around that and the kitchen requires gas for appliances. But the heating and cooling system and the lighting, the project is supposed to compensate that.”
Other than the science lab and kitchen, all power comes from the solar panels.
“There are the energy generation on-site, the energy storage off-hours, and there’s the ground source heat system. Those are the elements that I think take us down to near neutral.”
John Paul II heated the school using solar power last winter and Cassidy said it all worked fine.
Rows of solar panels at John Paul II Catholic Secondary School. (Kate Otterbein / XFM News)
“I was a little curious about what happens to snow when it’s on the solar panels. It just slides off.”
As for the students, the solar panels will benefit their learning as well. There are still some finishing touches being put together and after it’s all complete, students will be able to watch what is happening through a reporting system.
“For our students, who have been pretty interested in the project generally, to see ‘today it’s a nice sunny day, the solar panels are generating this many kilowatt hours per hour.’ It’d be kind of cool for them to see that this is indeed working and is working very efficiently,” says Cassidy.
Ameresco, the company that owns the project, is happy to help students learn about the process too.
“Ameresco has been very interested to answer any questions our kids have, meet with kids. We have an eco team for example. They’ve been monitoring progress and as members of the eco team, they have to do a project. So they’ve been reporting on how this is performing and what’s been taking place.”
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