Greenskies Talks Solar with Fairfield Warde Students

Press Release | Fairfield, CT
April 8, 2016

Four employees representing Greenskies Renewable Energy discussed the benefits of solar energy with five students and the headmaster and housemaster of Fairfield Warde High School this past Wednesday, a session that included a tour of the solar arrays being built on the roof of the school.

Four of the five students – seniors Radek Przygodzki and Utkristaa Shrestha, and sophomores Ben Dachman and Mira Elzanaty – represented Warde TV, the school’s student-run closed circuit television station, while the fifth, Sohan Choudhury, a junior, represented Warde Focus, the student newspaper.

Greenskies is in the final stages of completing a 701-kilowatt rooftop solar installation at the school. The array, which includes 2,261 solar panels, is expected to produce about 880,000 kilowatt hours, or kWh, of clean electric energy per year.

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 880,000 kWh of energy production would offset the carbon emissions of 128 passenger cars driven for an entire year and would provide enough energy to power about 84 typical New England homes for a full year.

The array is expected to be operational by late this month.

“It’s very exciting to be a part of a large-scale scientific project like this that’s also environmentally friendly,” said David Ebling, the school’s headmaster. “It represents a wonderful educational opportunity for our students. I can’t wait to get that monitor up and running.”

As part of its agreement with the school, Greenskies has agreed to mount a 39-inch television monitor just outside the cafeteria so students can track the amount of energy being produced by the solar system and the cost savings that energy will produce.

“As the array will be monitored in real time, a URL address will be made available to faculty and students to be used as part of their curriculum. The solar array will become an important educational tool when the school’s science department introduces a new unit on solar energy in the near future,” said Steve Fekete, one of the school’s housemasters.

Based in Middletown, Greenskies is an eight-year-old company that designs, builds and maintains solar photovoltaic systems for commercial and industrial clients, municipalities and government agencies, educational institutions and utilities throughout the United States. Solar installations designed and built by Greenskies have now produced more than 105 million kilowatt hours of clean electric power.