Hayes Freedom School

Thanks to the generous support of Clark Public Utilities, Hayes Freedom School in Camas, Washington joined the Solar 4R Schools program in 2010. As a Renewable School, Hayes Freedom is building a dedicated community of renewable energy educators, generating clean energy through their 40-kilowatt photovoltaic system and leveraging the system's performance data as an educational tool to bring energy topics to life in their classrooms.

The PV system includes 64 photovoltaic panels, comprising eight solar arrays. In addition to these panels, the roof also has 12 solar air preheating ducts and seven heat recovery ventilators. Over the commons area and kitchen area of the building are also eight solar water heaters that are connected to their high efficiency boiler and radiant floor heating in the commons area of their building.

Educators within the school received a customized renewable energy teacher training, hands-on science kit materials to augment the school's existing curricula, and complete access to the resources available on the Solar4RSchools.org website. Energy monitoring provided to the school at the time of the project made the live performance data from their PV system accessible to the community for educational purposes.