Kenneth Kerchenske and Belle Sherwood | Solar power brings costs down for schools

Over the summer, as school districts across Pennsylvania were entering the 2025-26 year, leaders at Cambria Heights School District were notified that electric costs were expected to increase 12% to 20% in the next 12 months.

Generally, school business officials anticipate an increase of only 3% to 5% in energy costs each year. A 20% increase would have a large, unanticipated impact on a school district’s budget.

Fortunately, school directors at Cambria Heights had already taken proactive steps to help offset rising electricity costs for decades to come.

In April 2024, the school entered a Power Purchase Agreement with a solar developer to install a ground-mounted solar array at the district’s middle school/high school campus. The project is expected to save the district more than $5.5 million in the next 25 years and supply nearly 100% of the high school’s electricity. Even better, the panels will be installed at absolutely no cost to Cambria Heights’ taxpayers.

At Cambria Heights Elementary School, the district is installing a rooftop solar array expected to generate roughly 60% of that building’s electric needs. The district is purchasing these solar panels directly, with nearly 50% of the costs offset by a $437,000 Solar for Schools grant awarded by the Commonwealth Financing Authority this past May.

With the addition of federal tax credits, roughly 80% of the project’s costs will be offset, saving the district an estimated $825,000 over the expected life of the system.

If school districts or other public entities are unsure about investing in solar, their leaders would be wise to read PennEnvironment Research & Policy Center’s new report called “Solar Schools: Repowering Education with Clean Energy.”

The report found that of the roughly 5,000 schools in Pennsylvania, there’s a combined total of nearly 2,000 football fields’ worth of rooftop space. PennEnvironment estimates that if solar panels were installed on all that available roof space, it would produce enough electricity to power more than 187,000 typical Pennsylvania homes each year.

The report notes that if Pennsylvania used its full potential for school-based solar panels, schools state-wide could save approximately $342 million over 25 years.

It would also protect them from the impact of rising and increasingly unstable electricity rates, a pressing issue here in Cambria County and across the state.

Currently, energy bills are the second-largest cost for U.S. schools after teacher salaries – around $8 billion annually nationwide. But solar (which has dropped in price by 70% since 2000 and increased in efficiency) offers a way to bring costs down instead of cutting teacher salaries or school resources.

And this isn’t only good for schools’ pocketbooks: The PennEnvironment study estimates that these solar installations also help reduce climate pollution equal to taking nearly 300,000 cars off the road each year.

That can make a big difference both here and across the state where approximately one out of every 13 children suffers from asthma and where 17 counties were given an “F” grade for particle air pollution in a 2025 report from the American Lung Association.

Helping our kids – and all of us – breathe easier is reason enough to have our schools “go solar,” but there’s more.

Solar on schools helps students become familiar with this future energy source in a direct, hands-on way, hopefully inspiring them to support clean energy and contribute to its future development.

Today’s solar school students can be tomorrow’s solar advocates, entrepreneurs, installers and designers.

Repowering Pennsylvania’s schools with solar energy will pay dividends for local taxpayers, our health and our planet.

Let’s encourage our state and federal leaders to continue incentivizing public investment in solar energy so that more of our schools can be powered by the sun.

Kenneth J. Kerchenske is the superintendent at Cambria Heights School District. Belle Sherwood is the clean energy advocate at PennEnvironment Research & Policy Center.