Fresno Unified School District and ForeFront Power, a developer and asset manager of commercial and industrial-scale solar energy and storage projects, have partnered to introduce a 17.5 MW districtwide solar energy and storage portfolio.
The completed portfolio is expected to save the District over $40 million throughout its 20-year life. It includes 40 different projects with solar canopies and energy storage systems across 31 district sites in California.
The labor used on the projects was from contracting services based out of the Fresno region and helped create 56 new local jobs in the process.
The portfolio will generate 23.5 million kWh of clean, renewable electricity - enough to power the annual electricity usage of over 3,000 nearby homes. It will also help the District offset over 18,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions annually, which is equivalent to removing nearly 3,600 cars from the road each year.
The partnership not only helps the District access a real-time performance monitoring platform, allowing district officials to create reports and visualize related environmental offsets and savings but also includes customizable renewable energy curriculum support to enhance STEM education programs for Fresno Unified students.
"ForeFront Power takes care of every aspect of solar energy solutions for our partner school districts like Fresno Unified," said Nate Smith-Ide, Senior Sales Manager at ForeFront Power. "We want to give public school districts an alternative to expensive, unpredictable energy expenditures with guaranteed performance and low costs from renewable energy solutions."
ForeFront Power implemented smart battery storage systems suitable for the District's solar canopies. These systems help during moments of maximum electricity usage to minimize the impact of peak charges from the utility and deliver electricity costs lower than a solar project alone.
Fresno Unified selected ForeFront Power through the Renewable Energy Aggregated Procurement (REAP) Program offered by SPURR.
