By Jason Evans
Staff Reporter

jevans@thepccourier.com

COUNTY — A new project at the Career and Technology Center aims to benefit Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative customers alike.

Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative Manager of Government and Community Relations Zach Hinton recently spoke to school board members.

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The cooperative is proposing to lease 3.8 acres of school district property in order to build a 250-kilowatt solar farm.

“We are starting to see solar technology really come into its own right now,” Hinton said. “The technology is just going to continue to get better and better.”

Blue Ridge Electric officials have been told by some members “that they are interested in solar, in some way, shape or form,” Hinton said.

Hinton said the Central Electrical Power Cooperative is made up of 20 power distribution cooperatives from around the state, including Blue Ridge Electric Cooperative. The Central Electrical Cooperative provides transmission lines and buys power for its members. The CEPC recently conducted a statewide survey amongst its members regarding interest in solar power, Hinton said.

“We feel like we need to be on the forefront of this,” Hinton said. “We need to be able to advise our members, give them good, truthful knowledge about what’s out there. Just like any other industry out there, there are good and bad actors. We want to be a trusted source for members.”

The CEPC’s Community Solar Project would see the construction of a community solar farm which would be sold to cooperative members, panel by panel, Hinton said.

“You could purchase a one, two, three-panel section of the farm,” Hinton said. “Whatever power was generated off that panel would be credited to your account. We feel like that’s the most fair and equitable way to do it, so members who aren’t necessarily interested in renewables aren’t going to be subsidizing our other members.”

The proposed site is behind the Career and Technology Center and Chastain Road Elementary School, Hinton said.

“We feel like this is a good fit for several reasons,” Hinton said. “It’s visibility, it’s topography and its location to the Career and Technology Center. “We feel like this is a very good partnership, not just from a location (standpoint) but also from an educational standpoint.”

He said it was an opportunity to “get on the cutting edge of the solar curriculum at the technical school and career and technology and high school level.”

Hinton said Blue Ridge would work through the CEPC “to really pioneer a curriculum that would work with the Career and Technology Center, as well as Tri-County Technical College, to work with installation, monitoring, maintenance, construction of a solar site.”

Hinton said officials hoped to schedule the solar farm site construction with the school calendar so students would have a “firsthand, upfront approach as to what all goes into a site like this.”

Other educational opportunities could be had through Santee Cooper, one of the companies Blue Ridge Electric purchases power from, Hinton said.

“Santee Cooper has already received state accreditation and State Department of Education sign-off on their curriculum for fifth-grade science teachers,” he said. “You can send them down to Santee Cooper, to be trained in that curriculum, and also purchase classroom materials, to allow those teachers to come back and teach that curriculum in their classroom.”

The cooperative would also assist in any facility and ground improvements needed at the proposed site. 1.5 acres would be used for the solar farm itself, with the additional acreage used for buffering, Hinton said.

A small bridge would needed to cross a riverbed at the property.

“We would certainly finance that portion of it,” Hinton said.

Career and Technology Center officials have discussed using a portion of that property for some type of Living Classroom or livestock program. Hinton said the cooperative would be willing to assist with fencing to help with that program if it comes about.

“We want to be a good partner,” Hinton said.

Trustee Henry Wilson said the agricultural department at the Career Center need a bridge that complies with state regulations in order to access that portion of the property for future use.

“They’ve got good land, they’ve just go no way to get to it,” he said. “It sounds like a great idea to me. It’s going to really open some opportunities for those kids to throw up some fences and do some things that farmers do.”

Cooperative officials would like to lease the property for 25 years, at $500 an acre per year. If approved, the CEPC would construct and finance the solar project.

Trustee Brian Swords said he and others “see a lot of education benefits in this.”

“This curriculum already exists at the technical college level,” Swords said. He said additional classes could be added to Tri-County Technical College’s existing program. The solar project could also benefit the district’s mechatronics and electronics program, Swords said.

“I think it’s a great idea,” he said.

Wilson agreed.

“There’s a world of engineers out there who design everything on computer and never get to see the equipment,” Wilson said. “The engineers in our country tend to be really hands on. They tend to grow up in driveways full of equipment that they work on on a day-to-day basis and when it really comes down to it, that type of tangible, practical experience really informs their innovation in a way that you don’t see in a lot of countries that don’t have those advantages.”

Wilson said he’s working on a program designed to get more women into the engineering field.

“The program we’re working on is renewable energy,” he said. “If you try to teach a kid how to play football and they’ve never seen a football, never held a football, don’t even know anybody that plays football, it’s almost impossible. If you’ve not seen a solar application, you’ve got no idea what the size is, the scale is, the way they’re laid out, the simplicity or the complication, it’s really hard to implicitly understand it.

“But if you drive by it everyday and you see it, you see how big it is,” Wilson continued. “Then you can sit down, you can very clearly learn the kilowatt-hour production per square meter, you can look at how much is sitting there and you can roll that back to how much you use at your house. It’s a fundamental ability to really visualize and understand that you’re not going to get when kids have never seen it or don’t even know where an application is.”

Wilson said solar power — and solar panels — will be more prevelent in the future.

“This is certainly a technology that we’re all going to be living with on a day-to-day basis,” Wilson said. “It’s a huge opportunity, just from a visual perspective, teaching kids, saying ‘Hey, that’s something we can do.’

Wilson said the proposal has “immeasurable educational value — and not just for kids.”

“But to the community, so they can see it, so they can understand it,” Wilson said.

Jerry Fleming, with the CEPC, said the total project consists of 5-megawatts being built throughout the state. That 5-megawatt project represents roughly $12M in capital expenses, he said.

“It’s our first foray into solar,” Fleming said.

Trustee Alex Saitta said he’d like to see the district’s cooperation offset with savings on the district’s power bill.

“I think it’d even better PR to say, ‘We do all these things plus we power the building over here — the Career Center — for nothing,” he said. “That’d be even better.”

Cooperative officials said the solar farm would not generate enough power — or revenue — to power a district building.

Wilson agreed.

“The total profit potential for a solar panel that size is fairly limited,” he said. “It’s big enough for a couple of houses.”

Board chair Judy Edwards asked if the school district would incur any costs regarding the solar farm project, either now or in the future.

“No, ma’am, there’s no cost,” Hinton said. “Not that we see.”

“I can’t see why we would not want to do something like this, especially if our students can benefit from this, if there’s no cost to us,” Edwards said.

Board members voted unanimously to accept Blue Ridge Electric’s proposal.

“We look forward to working with you,” Edwards said.

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