A $13 million dollar energy project that is expected to save Owensboro Public Schools upwards of $400,000 per year is moving along expected and should be completed as scheduled according to district officials.
After Owensboro Municipal Utilities informed OPS officials in 2015 of a rate hike, the district spent years mulling over the possibility of initiating the effort that would improve infrastructure and electrical systems in most of the district’s buildings. CMTA Energy Solution was eventually hired for the project.
OPS Director of Maintenance and Facilities Chris Bozarth said the phases for each building are varied at this time due to equipment delivery time and availability. However, all of the buildings are currently at least 50-70% complete, he said.
“Foust and Sutton are well ahead of this schedule. The plan is to have the work completed by the end of the month,” he said.
Bozarth said though the project was initially slated to cost $9 million, the decision to include solar paneling raised the price to $13.4 million. Roughly $8 million will go toward energy savings and the rest is budgeted as a capital project.
The main purpose for installing solar panels was to generate power that would create a buffer to any peak demand in order to reduce the overall monthly electrical costs. Bozarth said the panels, once paid for, would create close to $100,000 in annual savings.
The location selection for the solar panels was determined by a number of variables. The top two factors included orientation of the building to provide the maximum possible sunlight and the age of the existing roof.
“Obviously, we do not want to remove the solar panels to replace a roof in a few years, so this was a large factor in the decision making,” Bozarth said. “The solar fields vary, based on location and available real estate on each roof slope, and the amount of power we can generate using calculations on payback, returns on any overages from OMU, and initial cost on the panels themselves.”
In Bozarth’s opinion, the biggest changes that will come out of this energy savings project include new LED lighting across the district, the implementation of outside air and dehumidification that will “create a better learning environment,” and the bi-polar ionization as an added step in making the learning environment safer.
