Lake Quinault School District making headway with solar power project

When students and their families attend the Lake Quinault School District’s open house on Aug. 24, they will see an addition to the buildings – four arrays containing 421 solar panels affixed to the roofs of the district’s buildings. Once the switch is flipped at the end of January 2027, the solar panels are projected to produce 68% of the school’s electricity needs, with the remainder of electricity sourced from Grays Harbor PUD.

The Washington State Department of Commerce through its General Clean Energy Grants funded this solar project – the official name is Lake Quinault School Solar+ Storage Microgrid for Resiliency. However, this isn’t the first project for which the school district has received funding to become more sustainable. In 2020, the school district was awarded a Washington State Department of Ecology grant to fund the purchase of zero-emission electric school buses, of which the school district now has three.

The school board is always interested in moving the school forward and pursuing any energy savings or alternative power projects, said Keith Samplawski, superintendent of the Lake Quinault School District. “And when it comes free, it’s hard to pass up.”

The solar project came together through a series of coincidences.

“Our board chairman at the time, Dave Christiansen, was the first one to say let’s look for alternative ways [to power the school]. It’ll save the community and taxpayers money by having solar power,” Samplawski said.

A short time later, Samplawski attended the Washington Association of School Administrators conference and met a representative from McKinstry, a company whose service offerings include designing, building and maintaining solar and storage projects.

Following a presentation that a representative from McKinstry gave to the school board, “they bought into it right away and they were all on board almost immediately,” Samplawski said.

There was discussion as to whether a place that receives 12 feet of rain a year is the appropriate location for a solar project. “And when we looked into it a little more, we found out that these new panels don’t need direct sunlight beams to charge them as much,” Samplawski said.

That the panels may only charge 30 or 40% during the winter compared to 97 to 100% during the summer wasn’t a deterrent from pursuing a project.

Their McKinstry representative directed Samplawski to Department of Commerce’s General Clean Energy Grant and assisted with the application process. For the grant application, Grays Harbor PUD and the Quinault Indian Nation issued letters of support for the solar project. In a Sept. 12, 2024, press release, the Department of Commerce reported that the agency was awarding $37 million to 46 projects “to boost clean energy technology innovation and support clean energy planning, design and construction projects throughout the state.”

Lake Quinault School District was among the grant recipients, however, they only received $1,875,780 for their project that was estimated at nearly $2.8 million.

“We were accepted for a less than full amount, like $900,000 less, so we were going to have to modify it and change it and lower what we could do. Maybe go down to like 200 panels instead of 421,” Samplawski said. “But then Commerce said, ‘Hey, wait a couple months. There might be freed up money that could get you back up to the full project amount.’”

Money did come through so the school district could pursue the original project as scoped, although it meant the timeline was delayed by about seven months. Installation of the solar panels began the week of Aug. 3, 2026, and spanned the next week. Due to the batteries being backordered and not scheduled to arrive until November, the solar panels won’t be officially in service until Jan. 2027.

Another serendipitous element of the project is the school district received a Small Schools Modernization Grant from the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction and a portion of the funding was set aside to replace the roof. When the roof was replaced, it was designed in anticipation of a solar array being affixed to the roof.

The solar project is anticipated to produce annually over 235,000 kilowatts per hour based on the solar modeling data, or 68% of the electricity that the school uses. This will result in a cost savings, at a minimum, of $10,000 a year in utility charges. “We anticipate it to be more than that but if it is $10,000 for 25 years, that’s still a significant saving,” said Samplawski.

Another community benefit of the solar project is that the school buildings are used as shelters in the event of an emergency. With the battery backup, the school can provide critical essential services, such as heat, and won’t have to solely depend upon generators. In a good year, the area may experience 12 outages; in a bad year 25 outages.

As for the maintenance of the panels, Samplawski said that’s fairly easy. “We will have to have our maintenance staff go up there and water them down or brush them with water, but that’s once a year.”

Additionally, the solar project is a workforce development and educational opportunity for the students; McKinstry has offered to connect students to career opportunities, and students will be able to see how the solar panels are operating in real-time.

“It’s a great thing for our school, our community, and I think it’ll be a learning opportunity for the kids,” Samplawski said. “We always have a lot of positive things out for the kids and for the community, but this is one that they will visually see.

Material from Dan Hammock’s article written on May 1, 2020, was used for this story.