Calif. school district innovates with solar + storage - Smart Energy Decisions

Energy Storage, Solar, Sourcing Renewables  -  June 18, 2019

Calif. school district innovates with solar + storage

The Pleasanton Unified School District in Pleasanton, Calif. will utilize solar plus energy storage solutions to significantly cut its emissions and save on energy costs. The project will include the installation of 1 megawatt (MW) of solar carports and a 660 kilowatt-hour (kWh) battery energy storage system at Pleasanton Unified's Amador Valley High School.  

"For many years it has been our goal to educate global citizens while focusing on projects that improve the health and well-being of our students, staff, and community," said David Haglund, Ed.D., Pleasanton Unified School District superintendent, in a statement. "As cutting emissions is crucial to our global future, our project to install solar generation plus battery storage will benefit our students for decades."

The investment is projected to save the Pleasanton Unified School District more than $2.2 million over the 25-year lifetime of the PPA, which will be financed by Duke Energy Renewables, according to a statement. Pleasanton Unified, which is a public primary and secondary education school district located east of San Francisco, is the latest installation at more than 100 California districts and schools where REC Solar has implemented clean energy generation and storage solutions.

The statement cited a Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables research report’s projection that education is one of the sectors driving 13-fold growth in energy storage globally by 2024."Education services is the largest sub-segment of commercial and industrial customers today," said Brett Simon, senior storage analyst. "School boards and universities make ideal customers for storage developers. They are willing to accept longer payback periods compared to private-sector customers, have multiple buildings to allow for many deployments from a single contract, and usually have needs for bill reduction and resilience."

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