School's future looks bright

MEDORA

An Indianapolis-based energy provider promises to make Medora Community Schools one of the first of its kind to be powered partly by solar energy, but only if the company can amend a recent agreement that hasn’t worked out as promised.

“The bottom line is we want to help you save power, and this is good for your image, and it is good for our image,” Andy Cooper of renewable energy provider Johnson Melloh Solutions Indianapolis told the five school board members during their meeting Monday.

Cooper, who is in the company’s project development and management, and his co-worker, Travis Murphy, director of marketing, outlined a proposal that would see the installation of a 40-kilowatt solar array on the school’s roof at no charge.

Murphy said the system, which has a $180,000 price tag, would save the corporation about 52,000 kilowatt hours of electricity each year or $4,700 a year at today’s prices for electricity. The system has a 40-year lifespan and could save the corporation significantly during its life.

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