How much would a solar panel to power a pretty big school be?

Question

How much would a solar panel to power a pretty big school be?

Answer 1

Are you talking about size or cost?

If size, the entire parking lot and all athletic field would not be large enough. A large school has peak demand of about 500kw (before the students plug in their portable electronic devices for charging.Cost would be $5,286, 244. 35 . This is all with today's technology.

Answer 2

You're probably looking in the neighborhood of a million dollars.  The first thing you'll do is audit the energy usage of the whole school.  Let's say you have a cheap PC that takes 300 watts.  300 watts of solar panel is several thousand dollars.  For that, you could buy about 6 computers!  Including one that's only 20 watts.  Now you only need a few hundred dollars worth of solar panel :)

So you go through the whole school like that.  Make it efficient.  Now you're buying a MUCH smaller solar panel than you would have otherwise.  

How well is the building insulated?  Does it need new doors or windows?  Get em and save a fortune heating the place.  How about earth sheltering the roof? Thermal masses?  Go through it all.  

Does it use electric heat?  Nope not with solar panels!  Put in a solar-thermal system that is 50 times cheaper.  Air conditioning?  Retrofit to ground loop heat pumps and save a lot more energy.

Then when you've squeezed every watt out of the school's energy use, you put up a (much smaller) solar panel for a great deal less money.

Answer 3

You're talking well into five figures in US$.