Conroe ISD’s Next School Will Be Solar Powered

Conroe ISD’s Next School Will Be Solar Powered

February 11, 2022 - LEAF

In a first for the Conroe Independent School District, Stockton Junior High School will feature two solar panel fields that will be used to energize the building when it opens in August of 2020.

At a CISD board meeting on Sept. 16, Easy Foster, director of planning and construction for the district, gave the board an update on current capitol improvement projects, starting with Stockton Junior High School. Stockton is about 60 percent complete and is considered to be on-schedule.

This will be the first CISD campus to include solar panels on-site and they are expected to be up and running in the next few weeks, generating power throughout the rest of the construction process. The power generated will lower the energy costs during the construction phase “pretty dramatically,” explained Foster at the board meeting. When the power isn’t being used, the district has an agreement with Entergy for the electrical provider to buy back that power.

The panels themselves are always on when the sun’s out. Overall we expect the field to produce at a rate close to what the district uses annually for energy usage.

 

BRIAN HOOD

Since the project was first envisioned several years ago, solar panels have become more efficient and more cost effective.

“When we originally did our calculations it was based on the current level of efficiency, which, at this point, is almost three years old,” Foster said. “Technology has increased with us, and the market, in general, for solar technology, has normalized a little bit. So, we actually got better pricing than we had anticipated for the more efficient panels.”

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