Sawyer’s Bay School installed solar panels on the roof of one of its buildings at the start of the year.
The upgrade was funded through a trust, which allowed the school to move away from its coal boiler, which was more than 65 years old.
Principal Gareth Swete said using the coal boiler never sat right with him, but it was needed to keep the classrooms warm.
He applied for the Genesis School-gen Trust, which had provided the school with teaching equipment in the past.
Since January the panels had saved the school about $2000, which was able to instead be used on the children.
The output of the panels depended on the weather, but schools were "perfect solar consumers".
Energy was only used during the day, so there was no need to store power in batteries, which were expensive and inaccessible.
The school buildings were wide and flat, so the panels caught the sun perfectly.
But it was not just about the money.
The panels provided the perfect opportunity to educate children on power usage and environment.
He tracked the school’s power usage using an app, which also showed how much was provided by the panels and how much was from the mains.
He could walk around the school turning things off and then track how much energy it saved.
"You can see the impact of having the heat pumps on."
The pupils could also put the information on interactive whiteboards so they could track it in class.
It provided a real-life example of how much energy was used by everyday devices.
