EARTH DAY

The Morning Call has an article on the solar panels the NASD will be installing (read the article here).


It seems to me that under this agreement taxpayer money funds grants that are given to out of state, for profit companies to build their facilities on publicly owned school district property and they in turn charge school districts for the energy they provide at a lower rate than the ‘traditional’ electric companies which operate and employ workers in the Commonwealth of PA.


It is Earth Day, and I understand the desire to be environmentally friendly, but the math here doesn’t seem to add up, nor does the funding of out of state companies and the use of public property for the operation of a for-profit company.


Here is the information from the article. The state provided a grant of nearly $1M. The project will cost $2.8M. The article says a company from Florida will own the ‘solar farm’. It also notes the solar energy generated will provide half the electric necessary to operate the NAIS.


This quote appears in the article:


''The huge benefit is that it will cost the school district nothing,'' said Lewis F. Lengyel, district supervisor of facilities and operations.


And this one:


“The solar electricity will have an initial rate cap of 9 cents per kilowatt hour, and subsequent annual increases of 3 percent or less. Energy savings will increase in 2011 when Met-Ed's rate cap is lifted; rates are expected to go up 40 percent.”


So the school district will pay full price for half its electric at one building, the NAIS. It will then pay a reduced rate for the other half of the electric at this building. It will lose the ability to use 2.6 acres of land. It will develop current farmland to install the solar panels.


I don’t know what the savings will be on an annual basis, but it would seem that it will take quite a few years to get to the $1M being invested by taxpayers.

FROM ROSS NUNAMAKER