Photo by Jackson Stack ’25

By Tyler Woo ’25

Despite the official introduction of the solar panels last year, work has not been completed on connecting with the inverters, which will allow the school to monitor the actual amount of energy being produced and utilized. 

According to Ms. Missy Grams, the Head of Facilities, the current problem is that the solar panels cannot be fully complete until the inverters are fixed. Since the inverters in the solar panels are not functioning yet, they are not reporting wirelessly to the DAS or Distributed Antenna System making it so Brophy and the student populace as a whole is unable to monitor the data and production of energy. 

Brophy’s solar panels were originally designed and built by Ameresco, a company specializing in renewable energy. The solar panels, which cover 118 parking spots, should help save 48 % of the schools energy, according to Ameresco. 

This is equivalent to 488.43kW or kilowatts per hour. With 48% of the schools energy saved, it can be assumed that a large amount of the energy budget for Brophy has been saved from the solar panels. 

The solar panels were officially announced in a celebration during the last school year in collaboration with Ameresco and the Student Climate Coalition.  

Since then, the solar panels have mainly faded into the background, becoming a regular sight for Brophy students.

It remains to be seen how long it will take for the connection issues to be remedied by Ameresco, but the data that will be collected once they are completed will be important for both Brophy and the Student Climate Coalition as a whole.