Southwestern College is plugging into the sun and cutting nearly a third of its yearly electric bill.
The school held a “flip the switch” ceremony on Wednesday to celebrate its latest energy addition. The community college now has six parking lots around the Chula Vista campus shaded by solar structures.
Southwestern College President Melinda Nish says the structures will generate three megawatts of electricity, saving the school more than $600,000 a year. “That will help us avoid budgeting more and more money for increased costs of electricity and allow us to better budget and kind of keep that at a constant cost,” Nish said.
The school is using solar parking lot trees because the rooftops there are too small to hold large sheets of photovoltaic panels.
SunPower handled the $13 million project. SunPower Project Manager Sean Mantucca says the parking lot was an obvious location. “There’s plenty of space here at the college to produce the energy that it needs to offset the energy that it’s consuming,” Mantucca said. “So ultimately you need to find that space to install the solar.”
The project was paid for with money raised by voter-approved Proposition R. College officials hope the project pays for itself in 10 to 20 years. The panels are expected to work for 30 to 40 years.
