You can track school's solar energy usage online

CORNWALL — Longer, and hopefully sunnier, days are ahead. While teachers may be wondering how to keep the attention of students with spring fever, it is nothing but good news for Cornwall Consolidated School and its solar voltaic system.

As of late last week, up-to-the-minute data can be tracked online. Go to fatspaniel.com and click on “Demos†at the top of the page. Then click on “Live  Sites†on the right. On that page, enter Cornwall in the search box, or scroll down to “PV Squared†under installers, then click on “Cornwall Consolidated School†from the list to the right.

The page that comes up shows how much power is being collected at the moment, current weather conditions and a variety of graphs that track energy production.

The solar power collection system, with panel arrays mounted on poles on school grounds, has been up and running for three months. The 9.03 kw system was earned by residents’ participation in the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund’s 20 Percent by 2010 incentive. Residents, business owners and town officials signed up to receive some or all of their electricity from renewable sources, such as wind, small hydroelectric and landfill gases. While it added a modest amount to monthly bills, the “green†companies producing power are using profits to invest in expansion.

Cornwall quickly led the nation in participation in the program, which is sponsored by states across the country. Currently 32.2 percent, or 207, of Cornwall customers have enrolled.

CCS Principal Robert Vaughan said they now have enough data to begin tracking how much they are saving in energy costs.

“We have some electric bills to look at,†he said. “Of course, we have to understand first how the billing works, but we can begin getting an idea.â€

Looking at the Web site tracking, he did a quick calculation of about $300 in savings to date. Rates per kilowatt hour dropped on Jan. 1 from about 19 cents to 16.435 cents.

“It may not sound like a lot, but it’s a start,†he said.

A daily monitoring of the system at the school shows a definite difference in generation between cloudy and sunny days, with the latter about double. Vaughan noted that March 10, a sunny and very warm day for the season, was “a really big one,†especially in contrast to the stormy days that followed. So the coming warm months bode well.

The system does not store electricity, but with preliminary estimates putting solar-powered generation at less than 10 percent of the needs at the school, there won’t be any power to spare.

The graphs only show tracking from last week forward. But other numbers are already producing a dramatic picture of the impact of the solar project. As of Monday, 2,064 kwh of power had been generated. Greenhouse gas emissions reductions are calculated at 3,563 pounds of carbon dioxide, 3.1 pounds of nitrogen oxide and 9.6 pounds of sulfur dioxide.

For the layperson, those numbers make more sense when presented at the Web site as the equivalent of the energy to run 16 computers for a year, power 57 homes for a day or run a TV for 14,348 hours. The savings in pollutants equals what the average car produces in 130 days.