Santa Barbara Unified Officially Solar-Powered
Following Delays, All of the School District’s Solar Panels Now Online
After a long wait, all of the Santa Barbara Unified School District’s solar panels are now online. Dos Pueblos High School was switched on last week, marking the end of the nearly three-year project and the beginning of a solar-powered school district.
The solar project was just a twinkle in the district’s eye in 2020, with plans for 14,000 solar panels and six supplementary battery systems to be installed across 14 school sites. Installation was completed in 2022, and all panels were expected to be operational within a year.
However, the process was hampered by delays due to supply chain issues and problems connecting to the grid. One by one, though, the systems have lit up. In September, 12 of the district’s 14 solar sites were up and running, with only San Marcos and Dos Pueblos — the district’s biggest energy users — waiting on permission to operate from power company Southern California Edison (SCE).
“We had a lot of issues with Edison — not the local office; the local office is very responsive to us — but the people that are in charge of dealing with the solar portion are based out of Los Angeles,” explained Desmond Ho, the district’s sustainability coordinator. “From my understanding, for everybody, they drag their feet on this.”
Ho said that the Edison office was inundated with tens of thousands of applications around the same time the district submitted its own, adding to the delays.
“Connection planning is a very involved process, and it can take some time to get connected to the grid,” an SCE representative told the Independent last year. “The timeline can vary pretty widely, and it depends on the complexity of the project.”
Dos Pueblos was the last of the district’s bunch to be connected to the grid. Besides the holdup at Edison, the school also had to undergo electrical upgrades. Dos Pueblos and San Marcos account for almost half of the district’s solar, “so it’s nice to have those online and running,” Ho said.
“It’s a long time coming, but we’re very happy that it’s finally done,” Ho said. “We can start helping the district realize the savings that we’re supposed to get.”
When they first negotiated the project, the district expected to save $8 million in electricity costs over the next 28 years. But because electricity rates increased during COVID, the district’s consultants now expect $14 million in savings over that time frame.
The up-front cost for all sites was about $2 million. That includes $1.2 million in contingency funds paid for by ENGIE North America, the contractor that owns and operates the district’s panels, plus $800,000 in up-front costs paid by the district for its power purchase agreement — ENGIE will provide the energy and maintenance for the solar panels at a flat rate of $0.1326 per kWh for 28 years. However, the district did not incur any additional costs due to the delays.
Alongside cleaner energy, the district is making its campuses greener with other sustainability upgrades. Ho said the district is moving away from natural gas by installing electric heat pumps and water heaters, and updating outdated HVAC systems. “That will probably save us a lot of electricity and natural gas while still maintaining circulation in the classrooms,” Ho said.
They are also going school by school to install new LED lighting to replace the old, half-broken light fixtures in some classrooms, starting with La Cumbre, Monroe, San Marcos, and Dos Pueblos. Additionally, the district is working with the city on a grant for new electric vehicle charging stations, which the public will be able to use outside of school hours.
