SunEdison and Irvine Unified School District, has completed three new solar installations at schools in Orange County, California. The school district now powers 22 schools with SunEdison solar PV systems, and expects to avoid an extra $5 million to $8 million in energy costs over the next 20 years. These avoided costs allow the school district to provide additional educational resources for their students now and for many years to come.

"We accomplished this with zero up-front costs, and zero maintenance costs through a power purchase agreement (PPA) with SunEdison. That extra budget means more resources for our teachers and students,” said Mark Sontag, director for math, science, and career technical education at Irvine Unified School District. “As the largest solar powered school district in Orange County with over 5.4 MW installed, we're taking this opportunity to educate our children on the benefits solar energy can bring to the community."

"The Irvine Unified School District is a wonderful success story and a role model for other school districts," said Sam Youneszadeh, managing director of west coast distributed generation at SunEdison. "They're inspiring to us, and we hope many more schools are able to follow their lead and invest more on education by reducing their energy bill."

The Irvine Unified School District will be building new schools over the next 8 years to accommodate an anticipated 1,200 new students a year. Building on their success, the school district is working with SunEdison and their architects to incorporate solar into the design of all new schools. SunEdison and its financing partners, including TerraForm Power, a SunEdison company, will be the owner-operators of the systems.

(Photo: University High School, a school in Irvine Unified School District. Photo Credit: Wikipedia)