Surry County High School will begin producing some of its own power next month.

Surry County Public Schools Assistant Superintendent Giron Wooden informed the School Board at its Feb. 18 meeting that a new solar panel at the campus is on track to go active within the next three to four weeks.

The School Board signed a 30-year power purchase agreement with Charlottesville-based Sun Tribe Solar LLC in 2021 and amended the agreement in 2023. It specifies the installation of a solar array with 1,100 kilowatts of direct current capacity.

The school will still have an electric bill. The solar panel won’t completely supply the school’s power needs, Wooden said. But offsetting at least some of what the division spends could result in to-be-determined savings.

Frank Dubec, land acquisition manager for Sun Tribe, first proposed the idea of installing a solar array at Surry County High School in 2020. According to minutes from an Oct. 13 School Board meeting that year, Dubec’s proposal offered no out-of-pocket expenses or maintenance costs for the school division in exchange for Surry purchasing the electricity generated.

The proposal is similar to an agreement Isle of Wight County Schools executed with Staunton-based Sigora Solar in 2020 to place panels on seven of its nine schools, excluding the now-replaced Hardy Elementary and the 1960s-era Westside Elementary, which is also slated to be replaced within the next few years. 

Several other schools across Virginia have partially or fully offset their carbon emissions by switching to solar.

Dominion Energy, which maintains a nuclear power plant in Surry, announced it had partnered in 2020 with Sun Tribe to bring solar panels to 21 schools in Fluvanna, Hannover, King William and Powhatan counties and the cities of Arlington, Newport News and Virginia Beach, estimating in a news release that year that the projects would help offset the equivalent of more than 310,000 tons of carbon dioxide, or the equivalent of taking more than 60,000 cars off the road for a year. The 2020 Virginia Clean Economy Act requires Dominion Energy to transition to 100% carbon-free electricity sources by 2045.