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Date: 11/29/2022
NORTHAMPTON – City officials, along with elementary school students and staff, gathered at RK Finn Ryan Road Elementary School on Nov. 22 to celebrate bringing solar energy arrays online at three of the four elementary schools in Northampton.
City officials such as Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra, interim Superintendent Janelle Pearson-Campbell, Ward 6 City Councilor Marianne LaBarge, and Ward 6 School Committee member Margaret Miller were on hand to celebrate the achievement.
According to Sciarra, as of this fall, the city has brought solar to Bridge Street Elementary School, Leeds Elementary School and RK Finn Ryan Road Elementary School. Each array, which is positioned on the flat roof of its school, is about 30 kilowatts in size, is made up of 80 solar panels, and will produce about 15 percent of the three schools’ current electric usage.
“With the help of Phippenadams Solar, Northeast Solar, and the city’s Energy & Sustainability officer Chris Mason, and the Central Services Department, we have taken a giant leap forward towards our goal of being carbon neutral by 2030,” said Sciarra. “These panels are reducing the amount of fossil fuels the city needs to power our buildings.”
City residents Morey Phippen and Brian Adams, who represent Phippenadams Sollar LLC, along with Northeast Solar, financed the installation of these three arrays. According to Sciarra, they have agreed to charge the city a discounted rate for the electricity produced by the arrays for six years. After those six years, the arrays will be a gift to the city, and the electricity will be free.
According to Mason, the city became aware of using clean solar towers to help some of their organizations back in 2016. So far, Mason, who has served the city as the Energy and Sustainability officer for 15 years, worked with Phippenadams and the city to install solar arrays on the Northampton Survival Center.
In 2019, then Mayor David Narkewicz worked with these same entities to install solar on top of the Northampton Senior Center.
Then in 2021, Northeast Solar, Phippen and Adams reached out to inquire about putting panels on some of the buildings that “provide services to the community.”
“We decided the solar arrays should be on the school buildings,” said Mason, who added that the only reason why they did not add a solar array to Jackson Street Elementary is because the city has to replace that roof at some point. “It didn’t make any sense to put solar arrays now, and then have to take them off to put another roof on,” he said.
According to Mason, the three arrays will annually offset the same amount of greenhouse gas emissions produced each year by six standard school buses, and the school department will save close to $13,000 per year with these installations.
Sciarra told Reminder Publishing that the solar installations jumpstart the schools’ transition from natural gas-powered boilers to high-efficiency electric heat pump technologies. The city is currently in the process of assessing all of the school buildings’ different energy levels.