BOURNE – Upper Cape Regional Technical High School in Bourne recently completed a large solar project that will benefit the school in a number of ways.
A solar canopy consisting of nearly 2,000 solar panels and stretching the length of a football field now sits over a portion of the school’s parking lot, and while reducing its carbon footprint, the project will also reduce costs, which will free up funds for educational purposes.
“It reduces our costs for energy consumption by 20-30 percent, so those dollars that are now available to put back into the educational process for students,” said Robert Dutch, Superintendent for Upper Cape Tech.
Part of a power purchase agreement with Solect, who funded the $2 million project and will also be responsible for maintenance, Upper Cape Tech will use 50 percent of the power generated by the 663-kilowatt facility, while providing crucial educational opportunities for a particular sector of students.
“Really for our environmental science students, who study the carbon footprint that we represent and that they individually represent, and measuring the amount of solar energy that this will produce on an annual basis is part of their curriculum,” Dutch said.
The solar canopy is the second largest on a high school Massachusetts, and the first to be implemented at a technical school.
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