Proposal to add solar and battery at Smith Vocational aims to fund roof replacement and provide 72-hour resilience

Staff presented a resilience proposal for Smith Vocational and Agricultural High School that pairs rooftop or canopy solar with a battery system to provide up to 72 hours of continuous emergency power for critical loads and to reduce peak electricity costs, presenters said at the Sept. 9 commission meeting.

The proposal’s authors noted the campus needs reroofing for buildings A and B; the draft project budgets in the meeting materials included an estimated $1,000,000 for roof replacement as part of the solar-plus-storage package. Presenters described the financial case: the battery would be used to shave peak demand and participate in grid services markets, increasing utility savings over a 20-year net-present-value analysis. Presenters reported utility-savings estimates in the meeting materials of roughly $3.8 million with battery configurations versus about $2.9 million without battery storage over the 20-year period.

Presenters said the battery-backed configuration produces a lower (less negative) net present value over 20 years because the battery increases available revenue streams (demand-response and capacity payments) and reduces demand charges. The system also supports emergency shelter functions: a battery plus solar array sized for critical loads would allow continuous operation of essential circuits for the stated 72-hour window, staff said.

School staff told presenters that the district is interested in options that could fund roof replacement while improving resilience; presenters said they had discussed approaches that would keep district capital obligations manageable by capturing energy- and resilience-related revenue. The project team proposed approaching the mayor and city council to ask whether the city would cover the incremental cost associated with the resilience element so that the school’s 20-year net present value could reach near zero.

Commissioners and staff discussed trade-offs. Some members noted the downtown resilience hub has a larger funding need and that directing scarce city resilience dollars to Smith Vocational could be politically sensitive. Others argued the site’s adjacency to the hospital and campus capacity make it a useful emergency location and that spreading resilience across multiple sites can be valuable.

Presenters recommended further refinement of net-present-value calculations and pursuing available federal and state incentives. They also noted the site’s strong electrical interconnection capacity, which staff said would reduce interconnection risk for a large distributed solar installation.