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Stimulus Supercharges Energy Efficiency Efforts

Silver City Consolidated Schools, in New Mexico, got $357,500 under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to install a solar hot-water heating system and other energy-saving features. The solar equipment, shown atop the roof, supplies almost all the hot-water needs of the high school's campus, top, including the kitchen, showers, and lavatories.

—Mark Holm

By Sean Cavanagh

Until recently, the students and faculty at Silver High School counted on an old steam boiler to provide their building with hot water—and the district’s facilities staff counted on the 1960s-era equipment to break down, and waste energy.

“It was a hog. And a maintenance nightmare,” said Barry Ward, the facilities manager for the Silver Consolidated School District, in Silver City, N.M. “It was not efficient, and it was impossible to buy parts for it.”

When classes opened this fall, the hot-water relic had been replaced with a solar water-heating system, which is now mounted on the roof of the high school’s gymnasium. The vast majority of the $112,000 cost for that addition was paid for by the 2009 federal economic-stimulus program, which is supporting hundreds of millions of dollars worth of similar renewable-energy and energy-efficiency upgrades in school...