When Lawrence Township school district officials look up at the sky and see the sun, they don’t see a yellow orb — they see dollar signs.
By Lea Kahn, Staff Writer
When Lawrence Township school district officials look up at the sky and see the sun, they don’t see a yellow orb — they see dollar signs.
That’s because the school district has generated nearly $2 million from the sale of solar energy credits in three years, thanks to the hundreds of solar panels installed on the roofs of the seven school buildings after voters approved a $10.5 million bond referendum in 2008.
The owners of solar energy systems may “sell” the energy generated by the panels to utility companies, known as solar renewable energy credits. Energy producers are required to produce a specific number of units of energy in a sustainable form. If the energy producers cannot do it, they can buy credits — or SRECs — through brokers.
The district earns one SREC for every 1,000 kilowatt hours that the solar panels produce. When the first batch of SRECs was sold at auction in March 2010, the price was $674 per SREC. The price for SRECs varies, depending on supply and demand, said Thomas Eldridge, the school district’s business administrator. It has been as low as $86 in January 2013.
But at the most recent auction, which was held in May, the price was $133 per SREC. That sale generated $43,890 on the sale of 330 SRECs. The district has about 900 SRECs that are unsold right now Mr. Eldridge said.
School district officials began exploring the possibility of installing solar panels on each of the seven school buildings in 2004. The goal was to address the loss of revenue as a result of Robbinsville Township’s decision to build its own high school, ending the sending-receiving relationship between the Lawrence and Robbinsville school districts.
School district officials had said the project would be “tax neutral,” meaning it would not cost the taxpayers any money. The New Jersey Department of Education agreed to pick up 40 percent of the principal and interest on the bond.
The district also received a $256,000 grant from the New Jersey Clean Energy Program, which helped to reduce the cost of installing the solar energy collection panels.
Meanwhile, Mr. Eldridge said the revenue has exceeded the principal and interest payments to date by about $1.3 million. The savings in utility costs also is factored into that number, he added.
”At this time, it would be prohibitive to start any other project because of the sale price of the SRECs,” he said. “We were right at the cutting edge of this project. We were able to sell SRECs at a higher price because the supply was short and we ‘owned’ the supply.”
”It was a good place to be, looking back,” Mr. Eldridge said. “The unspoken benefit to solar power is that we are protected against inflation. We generate about 25 percent of the electricity we consume. We have become insulated to a certain extent to the volatility of the price of electricity.”

