energy saving

Solar-Plus-Storage Microgrids Installed in Santa Rita Schools

Solar PV plus Sharp SmartStorage® energy storage systems have been installed at six sites within the Santa Rita Union School District in Salinas, California. The systems will provide up to seven hours of power at each school during a grid outage and are expected to offset the school’s energy and demand usage resulting in savings on its utility bills. These multi-campus systems will enable the schools to support the local Salinas community as Powered Emergency Response Centers in the event of disasters that cause prolonged outages.
Solar-Plus-Storage Microgrids Installed in Santa Rita Schools

The systems include 1 MW of solar PV integrated with 1.1 MWh of Sharp’s SmartStorage® behind-the-meter energy storage systems. The project was developed by SolEd Benefit Corporation, engineered by Sharp and Black & Veatch, constructed by MBL Energy and financed by Generate Capital.

“On-site generation and storage is a growing trend among businesses and mission-critical facilities such as schools and electrified transportation fleet deployments,” said Paul Stith, Director of Strategy & Innovation for Black & Veatch’s Transformative Technologies business. “We’ve seen solar and battery costs drop significantly, which makes these solutions affordable, and with them agencies and owners have more predictable utility bills, which is important to organizations like school districts that work with very fixed budgets.”

Incentive programs also enable new and emerging distributed industry resources. The California Public Utilities Commission’s Self-Generation Incentive Program provides dollars for customer-sited energy storage for low-income communities, commercial, and educational and government institutions. Other states with incentive programs include Nevada, New Jersey, Maryland and Hawaii.

Federal incentives also aid renewable energy and storage projects. Commercial properties may qualify for the Investment Tax Credit (ITC) for installing designated renewable energy generation equipment, along with storage. In addition, financing partners, like Generate Capital on the Santa Rita Union School District project, can provide funds to launch the efforts and unlock savings.

“Initiatives like the one in Salinas are about teams coming together to innovate and create positive change,” Stith said. “By taking advantage of all the resources available to them, the school district is setting itself up for the clean-energy future and in the process adding community resiliency.”

"California school districts face extremely challenging budgeting situations and any reduction in operational expenses can directly translate into money for teachers, books, or supplies," said Dr. Shelly Morr, superintendent of SRUSD. "It is also important for our community that schools aren't impacted by events such as power outages as this disrupts not just the school day, but parents having to leave work early or scramble to make other arrangements for their children. We're excited to see these clean energy systems implemented on our school campuses."


Generate Capital
 
Sharp Electronics Corporation’s Energy Systems and Services Group

MBL-energy

Black & Veatch

Baterías con premio en la gran feria europea del almacenamiento de energía
El jurado de la feria ees (la gran feria europea de las baterías y los sistemas acumuladores de energía) ya ha seleccionado los productos y soluciones innovadoras que aspiran, como finalistas, al gran premio ees 2021. Independientemente de cuál o cuáles sean las candidaturas ganadoras, la sola inclusión en este exquisito grupo VIP constituye todo un éxito para las empresas. A continuación, los diez finalistas 2021 de los ees Award (ees es una de las cuatro ferias que integran el gran evento anual europeo del sector de la energía, The smarter E).