If any others would like to donate, please let me know ASAP, as I will try to get it all finalised by the end of the week to get everything moving so it can be completed by the time school starts next year. So far, we have around $80,000 worth of panels, which will make a major reduction in the school's operational expenses for the next 50ish years.

A bit more about the project

After a bit more research, I found out that the power bill for the school comes out of the operational bulk grant for the school, which also covers office staff, teacher aides, maintenance staff and equipment, and all of that money comes from the MoE and is based on the school roll. It turns out the school power bill is more than I could have imagined, so any money saved from the power bill can be directly put towards improving our school.

After living and operating our business, off-grid with solar energy over the past 10 years and seeing the cost of solar plummet in the past couple of years, along with the Mackenzie being a great place for rooftop solar (even in a hoar frost, there is still significant solar power generation), I thought solar on the new school roof was a no-brainer.

Even though, as you all know, we are surrounded by power stations, it doesn’t equate to super cheap power for locals, but luckily Meridian Energy have come on board with this project and along with other local businesses, so far we have around $80,000 worth of money pledged already.

To round things off, it is around $750 per 500-watt solar panel (including a share of the required inverter, panel rails, engineering, scaffolding, installation, travel, design, permits, inspections, etc). That single solar panel should save the school around $125-$170 per year (assuming the power price stays the same and we know there’s only one way it’s going to go…)

The solar panels are warrantied for 30 years, and I would expect most of them to last 50 years. The inverters I would expect to upgrade every 15 years as technology improves

If you are interested in donating one or more solar panels to help the future of Twizel Area School, please email me at [email protected] or call 02102361942. I would like to get this moving ASAP so they can be installed during the construction of the new school.

Thank you, once again,
Mike Bacchus