MANILA - One public school in Valenzuela City will be getting a little help from the sun in delivering education to its students come the opening of classes on June 15.
Sitero Francisco Memorial National High School (SFMNHS) in Barangay Ugong installed last month an array of solar panels that would provide one to five kilowatts of electricity to light up at least nine of its classrooms.
The solar panels will only need six hours of sunlight to generate its maximum load.
With this, the institution has become one of Metro Manila’s first public schools to use a hybrid power source and among the first to tap a renewable energy source like the sun.
“We really wanted to reduce our electric consumption and return the favor to our city government for paying our electricity bills,” said school principal Cesar Villareal who conceptualized this project.
But seeking to become a green school had not been an easy task, he said.
New and expensive
For starters, solar power is still a relatively new and expensive technology in the country, despite its growing usage in more developed nations. As such, it was difficult finding a group willing to finance a novel project. Also, there are very few local suppliers to provide the equipment.
Villareal said that when he and the school’s science department head, Jameson Tan, conceptualized the project, they wanted not only to save on electricity costs but to also use clean energy. Their location in Metro Manila narrowed down that choice to solar power.
“We are a tropical country and the sun is everywhere, surely we could use its energy for our electric consumption,” said Villareal.
The project set them on a search for willing sponsors here and abroad.
FEE to the rescue
Tan eventually found the Ohio-based Foundation for Environmental Education (FEE) of Glenn Kizer. Kizer had a local representative look at the school and its plans for greening its classrooms.
FEE contracted Illinois-based firm Wanxiang America to build the 6 solar panels—
each of which was about the size of an office door. The six solar panels cost about P500,000.
Arriving in Manila, the panels had to pass customs and Mayor Sherwin Gatchalian agreed to let the city shoulder the P26,000 tariff for its entry into the country.
Later, Villareal and Tan had to look for local installers as the city government engineers were not familiar with the technology.
It was Laguna-based FFG Solar Power Trading that was eventually contracted to install the panels and the installation fee of P250,000 was again shouldered by the Valenzuela city government.
The cost of installation included the price of other equipment like charge controllers and the eight deep-cycle batteries that would store the energy from the sun.
Manila Electric Co. (Meralco) built a separate line from the batteries to the classrooms to power energy saving CFL, or compact fluorescent light, bulbs. The other appliances in the rooms, like the fans, still run on Meralco power.
With the long way that the solar panels had to travel from the US to this public school, the proponents could not help but be discouraged at times.
But Villareal said they were sure that tapping solar power would soon give a return of investment to the school and to the city.
Besides, he said, the lesson it teaches the students of the school is far more beneficial.
“That we can teach the students that this is feasible and that this is something they can take up in the future is a benefit in itself,” said Villareal.
The use of renewables or green technology in relation to the problem of climate change will in fact be a part of the science curriculum this schoolyear, he said.
“This way, it will be easy to teach the students how this works. Actual operations can be demonstrated by just going to our very own solar panel,” said Villareal.
It is still too early to tell how much savings SFMNHS will gain from the project. After its classes open on the 15th, they will start monitoring the daily power use of the classrooms and then eventually compare their previous usage.
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