School Power…Naturally was started in 2002 as an innovative program funded by the NY State Energy Research and Development Authority ( NYSERDA)  to educate New Yorkers about energy, and, in particular, the role solar electric power (photovoltaics or PV) can play in providing clean energy for our homes, schools, and businesses.

The $2.1 million School Power…Naturally Program was offered to schools as part of NYSERDA’s New York Energy $mart^SM Schools Program. Each of 50 schools, which were competitively selected in 2003, received a solar energy and data collection system, worth about $24,000, for a school contribution of $1,500, or more than 90 percent of the cost to the school.

Solar Works, Inc. was selected to serve as the prime contractor for the program. Solar Works designed each system and then worked with a number of NY subcontractors to install the systems and associated data acquisition hardware over a 3-year period. In addition, Solar Works was tasked with developing renewable energy curriculum materials for NY schools.

Teaming up with professional curriculum writers from the State University (SUNY), solar lesson plans were created for grades 5 through 12 that described interactive ways for students to learn about solar energy using the PV equipment installed at the school. These curriculum materials are available to the public and can be downloaded from NYSERDA’s website.

Instrumentation and educational software hooked up to the PV arrays at the 50 schools work in concert to generate computerized performance data which is displayed according to 15–minute averages. This data can also be accessed from NYSERDA’s School Power Naturally website.

The data is automatically analyzed to display daily and cumulative electricity generation. An “avoided emissions” feature shows students how much of certain air pollutants would have been emitted had the electricity from the systems instead been generated by the typical energy mix of power plants in New York.