After falling into months of limbo, an effort to install solar panels on the roofs of Waukegan School District 60 buildings has made “substantial progress in the last few weeks” and construction could start this June, a spokesman for the energy company said.
A year after New Jersey-based NRG originally approached the Waukegan school board, company spokesman David Gaier said NRG has chosen seven to nine school buildings where they plan on installing solar panels, which will be donated to the district and used to offset the district’s energy costs.
While current plans have installations planned at nine schools, final engineering assessments could whittle that number down to seven, he said.
The schools being looked at include Andrew Cooke and Lyon magnet schools; Daniel Webster, Jack Benny and Miguel Juarez middle schools; and Greenwood, Hyde Park, Washington and Whittier elementary schools.
In picking the sites, NRG and the district looked at roofs that would be best situated structurally and in terms of the amount of sunlight they receive, district spokesman Nick Alajakis said. They also did take into account any future roof repairs that may be needed.
“We’ve chosen schools with building conditions that help ensure the longest life possible for these systems,” Gaier said in an email.
The entire cost of the project, including system design, equipment purchases and installation, is estimated at $3 million and being covered at no cost to the district by NRG, which also owns the coal-fired power plant on Greenwood Avenue in Waukegan, Gaier said.
The company plans on submitting a construction permit application within the next two weeks with construction to begin in June, Gaier said.
The process involves installing racking systems to hold the solar panels as well as micro-inverters that convert the energy to the AC current from DC, then installing the panels themselves and connecting the system to the school’s electrical system, Gaier said. A local utility will have to inspect the system, and then it will be tested.
Discussions have also included having a website where students can track how much energy is being produced and the accompanying savings, a feature that particularly appealed to the district, Alajakis said.
The goal is for the installation to be complete by the end of August with energy being delivered to the schools by the end of 2016, he said.
NRG did not have an updated estimate on how much the schools would be saving, though the company is looking to offset the energy consumption at the schools where panels will be installed by 20 percent, Gaier said.
During its original presentation to the school board a year ago, the company cited $70,000 in annual energy savings with 800 kilowatts generated through installations at 11 facilities, a higher number than what is now being contemplated.
Another solar project being contemplated by the district is still in the feasibility study phase, Alajakis said.
The district, the city of Waukegan and the Waukegan Park District have been talking about teaming with ComEd to allow construction of a 50-acre solar field capable of generating up to 7 megawatts of power at the Yeoman Creek landfill on Waukegan’s north side.
The site — surrounded by Lewis Avenue to the west, Western Avenue to the east, Glen Flora Avenue to the south and Sunset Avenue and North Road to the north — was used as a municipal dump for residential and industrial waste from 1958 to 1969. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, potentially explosive landfill gas and polluted liquids that included “chemicals, elevated concentrations of metals and ammonia” leaked from the site over the years, requiring a Superfund cleanup that was initiated in the late 1980s.
Plans to reuse the property as parkland have failed to materialize amid ongoing environmental concerns, and an EPA report from November 2013 explored the possibility of establishing a solar field that would be constructed and operated by a private entity under a land-lease arrangement with the owners.
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Solar project back on track at Waukegan schools
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