Schools and Homes Case Study:
​St Anthony's School and St Dominic's College, Whanganui

At this early stage of the school solar project development phase Engynious offered to fund the system itself rather than each school having to allocate their limited capital project funds, this included Engynious carrying all the solar generation system’s lifetime costs & risks so the benefit to each school would be that they only ever had to pay for the solar generated electricity they consume from the solar panel arrays installed on their school roofs. 

At this stage of the solar project development phase the New Zealand head of the Catholic Society of St Pius X (who is also the Principal of St Anthony’s Primary School and St Dominic’s College) decided to thoroughly investigate whether investing in their own solar PV system made better sense, therefore, for transparency Engynious supplied their calculations showing what the total long-term costs and savings forecasts would be between owning a system versus entering into a long-term PPA agreement, and to ensure the schools could proceed to make a fully informed decision Engynious conducted a free service to survey whether their school buildings and electrical systems were suitable for installing solar generation systems too.

At the end of the day the head of the Catholic Society of St Pius X made the decision (which was endorsed by his District Superior for Australia and New Zealand) to enter into a Power Purchase Agreement with Engynious as the facts were compelling to do so when you considered the significant savings in the cost of grid sourced electricity that would be possible over the lifetime of each solar generation system and with the knowledge that each school would further benefit from using Youdera, the Engynious energy monitoring tool, to demonstrate to their students via displaying on the school website, the real-time performance of each solar generation system in saving electricity while in parallel significantly reducing each school’s carbon emissions.

Soon after this project was sanctioned Engynious initiated its 6-step clean energy transition methodology with these schools, the system’s component suppliers, and a trusted local installer (including engaging the local Lines company to arrange network connection permits and regulatory approvals). These processes were engaged to deliver each system’s design, project funding, and resulted in the successful installation of each solar generation system so that both are now operated as two independent clean solar energy generation systems on behalf of each school.

These systems represent together a total of 35 kWp in solar generation capacity for both St Anthony Primary School and St Dominic College. Importantly Engynious’ funding covered the cost of the solar generation system’s panels, inverters and mounting racks while the school made a contribution towards the cost of installation which allowed for a net-positive outcome in the immediate economics of their combined solar generation projects. 

At each step of the way the schools were kept informed by Engynious beginning with an in-depth review of all relevant design options that met the conditions found during each school’s site-survey stage as guided by Engynious’ German technology centre, then deciding on the best funding balance between a school co-funding the installation phase or Engynious fully funding the entire project via its Swiss financial centre, what components were to be procured for the system from suppliers and finally Engynious introduced the local installer to the schools prior to commencement of the work as per a system installation project plan pre-agreed with each school that minimised disruption to the normal school daily operations. 

Throughout the installation planning stage and actual work on the school sites Engynious kept both schools aware of all necessary WorkSafe requirements being put in place by the local installer, this included scheduling the solar generation system installation during the school holidays and putting in place scaffolding and safety rails for safely working-at-height as well as keeping all work areas protected from accidental incursion by any unauthorised people. Naturally, once installed each school was taken through their system’s commissioning review, as conducted by an independent electrical inspector, and all relevant operating and maintenance guidelines and network connection permits and regulatory documentation.

Engynious was able to include in the funding for each school’s solar generation system a supply of the durable and high performance glass-glass solar panels from their international partner, German manufacturer Solarwatt, which were installed by the local installer the school was familiar with due to the installer’s past work when they were contracted to wire the school’s new administration block, so a strong positive in keeping work local to the community.

By having access to real-time monitoring of each school’s solar generation system a wide range of functions are available for the benefit of the school, its student and the local community.  Beginning with the convenience of being able to track the operating performance of the system by instantly knowing its current and past electricity generation as well as what the school’s consumption of electricity is possible at any stage, of course this makes Engynious’ billing of each school for their recorded use of solar electricity transparent because everyone shares access to view the same figures – open transparency!

Naturally, each school has online access to their own Youdera Monitoring and Reporting Dashboard showing a summary of the performance of their solar generation system that is able to be customised by the school, including solar electricity generation, school site consumption, imported & exported electricity to the network grid, plus a selection of performance statistics on electricity cost savings, carbon emission reduction and climate-change too.  A very valuable additional feature is each school having the ability to showcase a customised real-time view of these performance statistics on their website.

For long-term system optimisation and maintenance Engynious makes use of Youdera’s built-in asset management functions to alert its customer service team know if a problem has cropped up on any system or if any remedial work is needed due to perhaps occasionally a system underperformance trend.

Engynious is very experienced in this area as illustrated below which shows a large group of UK schools currently being managed under its Youdera Energy Management Services Platform.

You can download the factsheet for more details: Engynious Partners with two Whanganui Schools for clean solar energy (PDF)

For a school to successfully include funding for a solar generation project along side approved works funded by the government’s property improvement fund or State de-carbonising fund depends on the condition of their school’s building roofs and a little luck, these grants often don’t cover the cost of the entire system requiring schools to look to combine the funding of their solar generation projects with other funding options to improve the economics.

If this is your case we can help you apply for funding by providing you with what you need to maximise your success. Or if you have some surplus funds, investing them in your own solar PV system may make sense too, so we can calculate the total long-term costs and savings forecasts for you and provide you with all the materials you need to gain the necessary internal solar project approvals.

However, if you don’t have the upfront capital budget to immediately install your own solar generation system and are worried about committing the school to a PPA contract term of from 20 to 30 years, then the good news is Engynious operates a very generous early opt-out Power Purchase Agreement funding model that allows a school at any stage to terminate the PPA contract and take ownership of the system without penalties, paying Engynious only the system’s paid-down worth pre-agreed at the time of the PPA signing calculated on the elapsed time from contract end since the term commenced.