How much Warren High's solar panels have made in energy cost savings, rebates

The first full year Warren High School's $7.3 million solar panels were operational, the district made back roughly $1.2 million in rebates and energy credit sales, and netted around $215,639 in energy cost savings.

The field of more than 7,000 ground-mounted panels are south of the high school's Almond Campus in Gurnee near Laremont School, operated by the Special Education District of Lake County. The panels performed admirably despite worse-than-expected weather, according to a representative of the company that built them.

Brian Ondyak, of Lemont-based Performance Services, said that from November 2020 to last October there were only 79% as many clear days as is usual for the area. Despite that, the solar panels produced 2,908,562 kilowatt-hours of energy, which is around 91% of what the company officials expected when they planned the project.

"That's a significant amount of power," Ondyak said at the District 121 school board meeting this week.

The district paid $7.3 million for the solar panels, but officials expect to make back around $3.6 million in rebates and energy credit sales over 20 years, in addition to energy cost savings.

Ondyak said so far the district has received $601,965 from rebates and sold $666,708 in renewable energy credits.

"Utilities like to procure them so they can claim credit for it, because they have a mandate for a certain percentage of their power generation to be renewable," Ondyak said.

District 121 Superintendent John Ahlgrim said he was pleased by the first-year results. He said that aside from the financial aspect of the project, it's important for students and the community to know the district is doing its part in trying to protect the earth using green energy.

Ondyak said the school reduced the amount of energy purchased from outside utilities by 95%.

Due to the pandemic there haven't been as many opportunities to integrate the solar fields educationally, Ahlgrim said. But, he said, he's hopeful once things improve that will change.