Wheelersburg Middle School – Ohio
Story submitted from Joe Lester
I am the Grandfather of a little girl at the Wheelersburg Middle School. There is a solar electricity installation system on the school. The panels were installed on poles and they sit outside the science room near the front of the school. Anyone who drops off kids or picks up kids at the school can see the solar panels.
Our community is small so it was important for us to get these solar electricity system or PV system. There is a lot of things that we in a small town don’t get, but we want the best educations for our kids and grandkids that we can get and this PV system will help our kids learn science and math.
The system was donated by American Electric Power and the Ohio Dept of Development’s Office of Energy Efficiency and the Foundation for Environmental Education. The biggest expense of the installation was the panel array and the panels were donated by American Electric Power. We dealt with John Hollback and Paul Loeffelman at AEP.
We raised money for our part of the project cost. I personally donated $1,000. But most of the money was raised in a “Walk-a-thon” in which we had more than 2,000 people donate $1.00. That is pretty good for a community of $5,000 people. Many of the people who donated money were teachers and school staff and parents of the kids at the school.
At the ribbon cutting, Congressman Ted Strickland’s Office (he is from this part of Ohio) sent someone from Washington DC to speak. Sarah Ward from the State of Ohio came and John Hollback spoke from AEP.
The Ohio Energy Project provided teacher training for our school.
I am writing this story because we are so excited about getting a Web based data collection system that will enable our students to see how much electricity is being generated by the solar panels in real time. Our kids will be able to compare how much electricity we are generating with similar systems in Chicago, Illinois, and Oakland, California. They are excited about this new addition to our system.
In the picture I have included Larry Schoff from the US Dept of Energy and Elaine Barnes (then) from the Ohio Office of Energy Efficiency and our previous Superintendent John Eaton.
We are now building a new high school and we had hoped to put a large solar array on the roof of the school, but I am not sure that is going to happen. I will provide an update on this in a few months.