Olympia High School to be site of community solar project

Sometime over the summer, solar panels will likely be installed atop the roof of the gymnasium at Olympia High School as part of a partnership between the district and Puget Sound Energy to increase renewable energy in the community.

Superintendent Patrick Murphy, during a joint meeting between the Olympia City Council and Olympia School District officials, said they strive to teach students the importance of taking care of the environment, and so, the district needs to do its part to lead by example.

“We’ve always said if we expect our students to do this, we need to model it as adults … in the building,” said Murphy.

In November 2019, the school applied for a grant with Puget Sound Energy that would allow Olympia High School to be the site of a community solar project, said Frank Wilson, executive director of operations for the school district, in a phone interview with The JOLT. The district was awarded the grant in October, according to an announcement from the district, and the panels are planned to be installed sometime over the summer.

The panels will be used to provide clean energy for the area community, said Wilson. The installation is free to the school district and the district will be awarded a small annual leasing fee for the roof space.

Additionally, Wilson said they hope to install gauges so students can monitor the amount of energy generated from the panels. And while the gym has a good-sized chunk of the campus' roof, there’s plenty more space for future projects where students might build their own solar arrays, said Wilson.

The school district initially submitted five different sites for use as community solar sites, but only one was selected. Wilson said they plan to continue pursuing projects at the four other sites. An existing solar project is set up on the roof of Roosevelt Elementary.

Wilson said projects like this help demonstrate to students some of the critical thinking and collaboration they’d like them to learn. In fact, one of the goals the district's board of directors put in place for their students is: “Our students will be critical thinkers who contribute to and collaborate with our local, global and natural world.”

Another climate-centric project this year was the addition of three electric buses to the district’s fleet. The buses came about through an application to the Department of Ecology’s Volkswagen actions grants — a pool of $141 million the state received from the car manufacturer for violations of the state and federal Clean Air Acts.

Through the grant, the school district was awarded the buses and the infrastructure needed to charge them, said Wilson. During the meeting with city council members last week, Murphy said the buses were in Everett going through some final inspections.

Another project that the school district worked on was at the urging of a student group. Thanks to the group’s efforts, signs have been set up around Olympia High School, designating the parking lot as a “no idle zone” — encouraging people waiting in cars in the school parking lot to shut their vehicles off as they wait, cutting back the emissions a running vehicle pumps into the atmosphere.