As part of his Earth Week celebration, Fullerton College held a ribbon cutting ceremony to commemorate the completion of a new solar luff system developed in collaboration with Forefront Power, a leading developer and asset manager of a commercial and industrial scale on solar energy and storage projects. The 1 MWDC Array at the Solar Parking place, located in the parking lot of students 5 adjacent to Sherbeck Field, is expected to save almost $ 6 million in energy costs of Fullerton College for the next 20 years.
Fullerton College has pursued this project to save on utility costs, reduce the CO2 footprint and promote the sustainability goals of switching to the energy consumption of the campus to 100% renewable energy. The solar port system will generate 1.8 million kWh of renewable energy, which is sufficient to provide electricity the annual electricity use of more than 300 houses. This energy output will compensate for approximately 19% of the College’s electrical consumption.
“After being in use for more than a century, Fullerton College is moving into the future by implementing solutions for clean energy with which we can reliably produce clean energy, reduce harmful emissions and reinvest energy savings in the success of students,” Dr. Cynthia Olivo, president of Fullerton College. “What a better time is than during the Earth Week to re -confirm our responsibility for the planet and future generations.”
This is a pilot solar project for North Orange County Community College District to help demonstrate how solar energy can benefit other campuses in the district. The project is the highlight of an initial study for the feasibility of solar energy in 2021, as a result of which the college helped to identify the project site, as well as the implementation of the Sustainability Plan 2023-2026 campus, that the development of the student Lot 5 Solar Carport Project approved (PPA) with Force Agreement.
The PPA with Forefront Power enabled Fullerton College to develop its project without prior costs and to use it without bond funds. According to the conditions of the PPA, the Power Power develops and maintains the portfolio for solar energy and the college charges a fixed, lower rate than the usefulness for electricity, locked up for the 20-year duration of the agreement. Power Power will continue to operate and retain the system without costs for the college, while the college benefits from budget security by preventing utility rate increases from preventing from the next decades.
Fullerton College selected Power Power to develop, finance and construct its solar and energy storage portfolio through the aggregated purchasing program for renewable energy offered by Spurr. Spurr, a joint powers authority of hundreds of public educational agencies, uses competitive requests, aggregated purchasing power and technical expertise to obtain excellent prices and conditions for utilities that are related goods and services. With the REAP program, every public agency in California can obtain the best prices and conditions for solar and energy storage of a competitive request throughout the state.
News item from Fullerton College
