School District pursues grant for energy collection and HVAC replacement

Orcas Island School District Superintendent Barbara Kline is pursuing adding “Green Energy” components to the school building, and thereby to the school‘s education program.

With the research of Kline’s Executive Assistant Cathy Ferran, a grant has been identified to construct wind turbines “to collect energy coming through the ‘wind tunnel of the San Juans’ which apparently is just behind our high school,” said Kline in a report to the District Board on July 23. Solar panels will also be considered.

State Representative Jeff Morris has offered assistance in finding matching funds for the project through the state housing and financing authority. Morris spearheaded the bill to establish the authority, which can issue bonds to cover 70 percent of capital costs for projects like the one the school district is considering, Ferran said on July 24. “These are the dollars that our federal government is putting out there to keep people in small communities like ours working,” Ferran said.

Kline told the district board, “If we can partner with our local utility — which seems quite possible, and if we can acquire most of the start-up funds from the grant, we could see significant savings in our energy costs in the future,” Kline said.

District Board member Scott Lancaster said there were local energy providers who could be employed in constructing the energy project. Member Charlie Glasser said of the plan, “It becomes very exciting to the community and a model outside the community. I really feel this [grant opportunity] was a find.”

Kline added that, as a part of the grant, “we will plan on setting up a K-12 curriculum on alternative energy/sustainable energy that will be a part of science classes.”

Furthermore, she is exploring if a part of this grant can be used to upgrade or replace the current HVAC (heating/cooling) systems.

At the district board meeting on July 23, Bob MacKenzie, Manager of Plant Operations and Support Consortium – a “hybrid” Washington State University Extension Energy Program/ State Department of General Administration, of which the Orcas District is a member – reported on the overall condition of the three Eastsound campus buildings, and specifically, their HVAC systems.

Mackenzie reported that the motors are failing in the elementary building’s HVAC system – “the system is not functional,” he said.

The high school HVAC system is not running efficiently, he reported, “The energy management system is obsolete.”

After a two-day examination of the district’s buildings, Mackenzie said, “The middle school has given its good venerable service, but it’s a problem.”  He plans to review his reports with a mechanical engineer, but says both the High School and Elementary School are “fixable” and can be “re-commissioned.”

His agency’s services include making a maintenance plan for custodial review that will “migrate to green cleaning.” He mentioned that other schools in the consortium have reduced the chemicals used in cleaning from 60 to 4 products.

The maintenance plan will create job cards for classrooms so that the teachers will know the elements and schedule of their classroom maintenance.

The cost of the Plant Operations and Support Consortium mechanical study will be about $2,500. The fee for the consortium’s maintenance and custodial evaluation is $1,050 per year.