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Cashmere Middle School Students Prove that Solar is a SNAP!

Release Date: 9/20/2002
Contact Information: Bill Dunbar
dunbar.bill@epamail.epa.gov
(206) 553-1203

September 20, 2002

Todd Gibson’s 8th grade science class at Cashmere Middle School are learning some important lessons today as they stripped wire for the school’s brand new solar array. The 600 watt photovoltaic (PV) unit, donated by EPA employees, will produce electricity and send it back into the grid. Students will measure the amount of energy produced and the Chelan County PUD will pay them for it.

Chelan County’s green power program – called “SNAP” – will pay the school a little less than 2 cents per kilowatt hour for the electricity and will add to that a percentage of the money generated from their other green power purchasers. The P.U.D. estimates that at current participation rates, the Cashmere Middle School system will generate between $600 and $630 each year.

The array will help teachers to instruct students about renewable energy technologies and how the energy grid works. Moreover, students will soon be able to link their production information together with schools across the Region to become part of a virtual power station. School solar arrays are up and running in Seattle and Vancouver, Washington.

Cashmere is the first school in the county to put up a PV array and pledges to use their profits to assist another school to participate.

Over 200 EPA employees donated personal funds to buy the array. The EPA’s Carolyn Gangmark said, “A huge percentage of our employees signed up because they’re committed to the environment and because they want to do something concrete about climate change”. Russ Elliott, the principal at the school, welcomes the new solar laboratory, and hopes that students benefit not just from the science lessons taught there but from the knowledge that “being part of the solution is the best way to be.”