Thursday, June 23, 2005 | 11:15 a.m.
On any grueling, sweaty Las Vegas summer day, the sun can be a fiery fiend taunting energy bills that rise with the cost of pumping out cold air.
But Clark County School District and Nevada Power Co. have turned the tables on the sun, using its power to cool off four elementary schools in the valley.
The solar panels took about three and a half months to install and have been operational for about a week, Paul Gerner, CCSD's associate superintendent of facilities, said.
Ruthe Deskin, Clyde Cox, Edna Hinman and Frank Kim elementary schools all have solar panels on their roofs. On Wednesday, Nevada Power Co. gave the district a rebate check for about $240,000 to compensate the schools for the cost of building the arrays and to buy the credit for the renewable energy produced there.
The schools' solar panel reimbursement is part of a program called Solar Generations, which was created by the Nevada State Legislature in 2003. The goal of the program is to kindle the market for photovoltaic solar energy in Nevada.
Individuals, companies and schools receive a $5 per kilowatt rebate for the solar panels they install through the program.
The solar panels will save each school about $2,500 a year in energy bills. An energy bill for an elementary school can run anywhere from about $100 to $300 thousand a year, said Bob Balzar, director of energy efficiency and customer strategy of Nevada Power.
The energy produced by the solar panels would be enough to fuel about 10 homes for a year, he said.
The amount of traditionally generated electricity that is saved by the solar schools is "not a very big contribution to the total needs of the valley, but you have to start somewhere," Balzar said.
Southern Nevada is a perfect place to harness the sun's power, with almost 300 sunny days a year, according to the National Weather Service.
The four elementary schools were chosen to participate in the program because they needed were new roofs anyway, said Paul Gerner, associate superintendent of facilities division for CCSD. The cost of re-roofing all four schools with 20 year roofs and solar paneling was about $2.5 million, Gerner said.
"We were actually relatively happily surprised to get a 20-year roof plus solar," Gerner said. "We thought it was a decent deal."
In addition to the solar panels, the schools also use a program created by Fat Spaniel Technologies that allows the children at the schools to track how much energy their school is producing.
This turns the solar panels into a learning tool said Loretta Asay, coordinator of K-12 math science and industrial technology for CCSD.
"Energy is a really tough concept for children to understand because you can't touch it or see it or feel it or work with it very easily," Asay said.
The school district used two different types of panels on the four schools. Deskin and Hinman have ridged solar panels which sit on an angle on the roof. Cox and Kim have flexable integrated panels that lay flat.
Dale Scott, the energy manager for the district said the idea behind using different panels is to test which is more effective if the district decides to expand the program to new high schools.
Gerner said one issue regarding the program is the cost. During the last energy year, June through July, Nevada Power Co. gave a $5 rebate for every watt, but this year the rebate is dropping to $4, which might deter the district from using as much solar power as originally hoped.
However, Gerner said that prices might drop as contractors the district used this time become more adept at procuring and installing the equipment.
Another issue is the ownership of the renewable energy credit produced by the solar panels, Gerner said. When Nevada Power Co. gave the district the rebate, it also purchased the credit for the energy produced perpetually.
Gerner said the future worth of those credits could be an investment for the district.
So if solar panels are put on schools in the future, the school district would have to choose whether or not to use Nevada Power Co.'s rebate and sell its rights to the credits.
The reason the credits could be worth more in the future is because of state regulations and possibly new federal regulations set for renewable energy. These regulations could increase the electric company's demand for renewable energy credits and renewable energy.
In 1997 the Nevada Legislature passed a Renewable Portfolio Standard as part of electric restructuring legislation. At the time, it required 1 percent of each electricity provider's total consumption be in renewable energy such as solar power, geothermal power or wind power.
In 2001 the standard was updated, making the requirement 15 percent by 2013.
Earlier this month, the legislature modified the bill and extended the deadline and raised the requirement to 20 percent of sales by 2015.
The U.S. Congress is also looking at an amendment to an energy bill that could set a national portfolio standard of 10 percent by 2020.
In April the Nevada Power Co. notified state regulators that it had failed to meet its minimum portfolio requirement of 5 percent for 2004.
Gabriel Romero, a spokesperson for Nevada Power Co., said working with the school district helps the utility toward the portfolio goal.
"It plays into our conservation efforts," Romero said. " Even though it's the school that is benefiting, we are benefiting also."
Sen. Randolph Thompson, R-Reno, who was one of the architects of the portfolio standard, said the joining of the utility and the school district is a worthwhile endeavor.
"I think anytime public education can take care of it (renewable energy), they should," he said. " At the end of the day it's taxpayer dollars and our kids."
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