San Diego Steps Up to Solar

The Board of Education for San Diego Unified School District approved a 5.2 megawatt solar power project for their school system. 23,000 solar panels will be installed at 20 sites and on over 80 rooftops. Renewableenergy.com stated the San Diego school district will have more solar power than any school district in the United States.

San Diego Unified already has 4.17 megawatts of solar power. With the new equipment they will have 9.37 MW total. The company who will provide the solar panels and installation is AMSOLAR. Managing partner, Josh Weinstein said, “We are proud that SDUSD’s leadership selected AMSOLAR as its partner for this groundbreaking 5.2 megawatt solar project. The structure of this partnership ensures that the District saves money with no taxpayer investment required.”

AMSOLAR will also assist with solar energy awareness projects on the school sites. The whole school system has 130,000 students. San Diego USD’s solar project actually began back in 2000, when they installed photovoltaics at four schools. In order to teach children about solar energy an Envirometer was placed in one of the schools to show how much electricity was being generated and the amount of pollution not created.

In a neighboring school district where the town of Encinitas is two schools will have solar providing about 70% of their energy y. The city of San Diego is working on getting up to five megawatts of solar power generation. They intend to reach that goal by 2013. So it appears some of the school districts are ahead of the city government in renewable energy.

Image Credit: Jon Sullivan

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Micheal M.

8:20AM PST on Feb 2, 2012

knowledge is not power its empowering lets be empowered
life has value beyond measure
Peace and Love

send a green star

KS G.

12:32AM PST on Nov 20, 2010

Thanks for the article.

Robert O.

1:09PM PDT on Nov 6, 2010

Great to hear. Go San Diego!

Linda M.

6:31PM PDT on Sep 18, 2010

so happy to hear this

caroline c.

12:26PM PDT on Sep 14, 2010

this should be a standard for all schools

Ruth R.

2:05PM PDT on Aug 27, 2010

Helping the Whole earth means that it will help the people.

2:03PM PDT on Aug 27, 2010

Go Solar! This is wonderful. This will help people get out of dept and stay out of dept, and it will help the whole earth.

Erin H.

3:59PM PDT on Aug 19, 2010

It's fantastic to see a state-wide initiative like this one, good on you San Diego!

Laurie H.

5:14PM PDT on Aug 15, 2010

I take my hat off to San Diego--- I hope the other states take their lead~ CLEAN ENERGY FOR OUR PLANET!!!!!!!!!!

Past Member .

9:21AM PDT on Aug 15, 2010

Interesting study about temperature and learning. We have several schools here that don't even have air conditioning. The students are sent home when it is over 100°F out because it is almost that in the school and no one learns.