"The Greenest School in Boulder"

While this website is principally intended as a place for me to park a wide range of personal thoughts, once in a while a work-specific topic comes along that is too good not to share. In the spirit of "finding the good in this crazy world", I offer the following news from Friends' School (while also conveniently and not so subtly parading the amazing new branding look we've adopted at the school, created by the wonderful people at Thinking Davis).

Friends' School has exciting news – the solar panels project that we have been working towards for a number of months now is about to become reality.

Friends' School is soon to be “the greenest school in Boulder” according to Eric Hinckley, the engineer and system designer for Solar Resource Consulting.  A whopping 93% of the energy needs for the school's elementary building will be provided by our solar array.  It is a system comprised of 144 solar modules which together will generate 33,000 kilowatts of power a year.

The installation crew will begin work this week, with an estimated completion date of November 1^st.  In early November we will have a “Flip the Switch” opening ceremony and we will send out more details nearer the time.  In the mean time, we are excited to tie everything we are learning about solar energy into our curriculum and we will host a gathering, giving the students opportunities to touch and learn about the solar array.  There will also be a web-based portal which will allow us to see how much power the system is generating and how much we are using.

We are indebted to many people both in and outside of our school community for getting this huge and amazing project off the ground, in particular Tom Cohen, Carol Hampf, Ryan Martens, Fred Marienthal, Jen Greene, Ryan McIntyre, Mandy Best, our Community Board, and the good people of Renewable Energy Ventures, Solar Resource Consulting, City Electric, and the City of Boulder for their generous grant.  Installation of the solar panels on the school roof has allowed us to meet one of the major goals of our Strategic Plan, that of environmental stewardship.

Let the sun shine in!