Solar is helping schools save big. Your district could be next.

Canary Media’s Electrified Life column shares real-world tales, tips, and insights to demystify what individuals can do to shift their homes and lives to clean electric power. 

More than a decade ago, Denver Public Schools decided that it was time to go solar. There was just one problem: The district didn’t have the cash.

Buying solar arrays outright can cost schools upward of hundreds of thousands of dollars, a steep price most can’t afford. ​“At the time, we just didn’t have as much capital to put upfront for rooftop solar,” said LeeAnn Kittle, executive director of sustainability at Denver Public Schools.

So the district opted to use a power purchase agreement (PPA), a financing tool that can help schools adopt solar with no upfront costs. Rather than directly owning their panels, schools can find a solar developer or other third party to fund, install, and maintain them. In exchange, the school pays the developer a fixed price for the power produced by the system — often at a lower rate than what’s offered by the local utility. 

With a PPA, schools can see ​“immediate savings from day one,” said Tish Tablan, program director at the clean energy advocacy group Generation180.

So far, this model has enabled thousands of schools to access cheap, clean power. More than 80 percent of solar capacity installed at nearly 9,000 K-12 schools nationwide has been financed by PPAs and other third-party ownership models, according to Generation180, and many are seeing impressive savings.

For its part, Denver Public Schools has installed 8.8 megawatts of solar power across 47 different sites since 2010, using PPAs to finance 3.7 megawatts (the rest is funded through energy performance contracting, a Colorado program to promote renewable energy at public institutions). Solar now produces 9.5 percent of the school system’s electricity, and saves the district 7 percent annually on energy costs, said Kittle.

Elsewhere, PPAs have helped schools meet virtually all their power needs with solar: Wayne County, West Virginia, expects to cover 99 percent of its electricity demand by next year with a solar PPA and to trim its utility bills by 10 to 20 percent. School districts in other states, including California, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, expect to save tens of millions of dollars over the next few decades. These lower energy bills have helped schools redirect money toward chronic budget deficits, teacher salaries, and even clean energy job-training programs.

But PPAs and other forms of third-party solar ownership are legal in only 29 states and Washington, D.C., owing to a mix of utility pushback and state policy stagnation. For schools that can’t tap the sun this way, there are other ways to bring down the cost of buying solar, from federal tax credits to state grant programs.

Whether you’re a teacher, parent, or student, anyone interested in nudging their local schools to go solar can help kick things off, Tablan stressed. 

“A solar champion can really come from anywhere,” Tablan said. 

Here are three steps you can take to advocate for solar in your local school district.

1. Start the conversation 

The first step, Tablan advised, is to get solar on the agenda: Start talking about it with community members and school leaders, and see if going solar is possible.