In March 2013, the Solar Foundation began gathering data on K-12 school solar installations around the country, publishing a map showing their initial findings later that spring. Those findings formed the basis of the National Solar Schools Census. In the fall of that year, SEIA joined the Solar Foundation in launching a more comprehensive data collection effort, continuing until July of 2014. Once data collection ended, all schools with solar installations were matched with the appropriate school from the National Center for Education Statistics’ comprehensive database of private and public K-12 schools in the U.S. Each school was then matched with its closest TMY3 station[1] and with a proxy for avoided cost of retail electricity purchases.[2] Using NREL’s System Advisor Model[3] and the assumptions, system performance was estimated and net present value calculated over a 30 year period. Final data on K-12 schools with solar and on the potential net present value for schools without solar is provided at schools.tsfcensus.org.
Data collected as part of the National Solar Schools Census included the following:
- school name
- school district
- address
- system type (photovoltaic or solar heating/cooling)
- system capacity
- year installed
- installation company
- funding type (cash/loan, grant, PPA/lease)
- installed cost
All data was collected at the system level. When data was only available at the school district or county level, secondary sources were used to trace installations to exact school locations. In instances in which price data was only available at the county or district level, total district or county capacity and total system district or county system cost were used to calculate an average price for each individual school system. Due to reporting differences among available sources, several categories of data were not able to be collected in full (most notably, data on funding type and installed cost).
Schools profiled in the body of this report were selected from the data collected in the National Solar Schools Census. School selection was based primarily on the willingness of participants to respond to a brief email or phone survey. From the list of respondents, final candidates for case studies were selected to ensure diversity among school geography, school size and grade level, system size, and financing type. Executive interviews were ultimately conducted with representatives of 15 of these schools.
Most of the data included in the National Solar Schools Census was collected from publically available sources. Data from non-public sources are being provided here with written permission from its original owner. Data sources included state and utility incentive programs, private grant programs, school districts and individual schools, solar developers and installers, and news reports. The majority of the data included in the National Solar Schools Census comes from the sources listed below:
- Connecticut Clean Energy Finance and Investment Authority
- California Solar Initiative
- New Jersey Clean Energy Program
- Brightergy
- Borrego Solar
- SunPower
- The Foundation for Environmental Education/PG&E: California Solar Schools Initiative
- The Smart Energy Living Alliance: Colorado Solar Schools
- Idaho Department of Energy
- Energy Works Michigan
- Los Angeles Unified School district
- Ohio Solar Schools
- RGS Energy
- Walmart Foundation
- Denver Public Schools
- WPPI Energyu
- Austin Energy
- Black Rock Solar
- Cupertino Electric, Inc.
- Duke Energy
- California Energy Commission
- Florida Solar Energy Center
- GreenPower EMC
- Johnson Controls
- IEC Corporation
- Illinois Solar Schools
- Environment California
- Montana Green Power
- New York Power Authority
- ReVision Energy
- Texas State Energy Conservation Office
- Bonneville Environmental Foundation: Solar 4R Schools
- SolarCity
- Solectria Renewable
- SMA
- Missouri Department of Natural Resources
- Wisconsin Public Service
- Rocky Mountain Power
- Massachusetts Clean Energy Center
- Nevada Governor’s Office of Energy
- NYSERDA
- PJM
- Renewable Energy Vermont
- Focus on Energy: Wisconsin
[1] Data from the National Solar Radiation Database http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/old_data/nsrdb/1991-2005/tmy3/
[2] Average utility revenue per kWh for commercial customers in 2012 as reported in EIA-861. Schools were matched to electric utilities by zip code. In cases were an exact match could not be made, the rate from a nearby utility was used.