Highglen Montessori Elementary School Basks in the Sun!

Students Learn about Making Electricity from the Sun.

PV Panels on Highglen Montessori Elementary School in Prince George

Students, staff and parents at Highglen Montessori Elementary School in Prince George are excited about the photovoltaic (PV) panels recently installed on their school.  They have the first PV system on a public building in Prince George! 

Highglen is one of 13 BC schools that received funding of up to $20,000 from SolarBC for installing a minimum 2.5 kW PV system.  Highglen's system is actually 2.8 kW and began generating power on October 20, 2011.  The PV system is tied to the electricity grid so that excess power produced on weekends or during school holidays can be sold to BC Hydro.

Parent, Dave Leman, explained the progress of construction to the K-7 students at school assemblies. View his entertaining presentation on  YouTube.  Dave and Rob Watt, coordinators of the solar project at Highglen, are developing renewable energy education tools and resources for the school, that can be shared with the local community.

Students and interested members of the public can track the electricity production from the panels by going to the Sunny Portal website.  The amount of power generated by PV panels is affected by the latitude of the installation and the amount of cloud cover on any given day.  The annual comparison graph provided by Sunny Portal shows how the electricity production at Highglen compares with the expected production for the latitude and weather patterns in Prince George.  (Note that the amount of electricity shown for the current month will be small at the beginning of the month and increase steadily during the month.)