The Sierra College Facilities Committee (which I sit on) approved staff’s recommendation to negotiate first with a company called AMSOLAR for the solar project I blogged about back in January. If they are unable to come to an agreement with that company, they’ll start negotiating with runner-up Borrego Solar.

Kyle Magin at The Union covered this in a great piece this morning:

“Both of them have done a lot of solar work for schools,” said Laura Doty, director of facilities for Sierra College. “AMSOLAR was just a little better on price.”

The community college will begin to negotiate a price with AMSOLAR immediately, Doty said.

The “power purchase” agreement puts all of the risk on whichever company negotiates a contract with the college, said Trustee Aaron Klein.

The company will own the array and sell the power it generates back to Sierra College, Klein said.

“This is an exciting opportunity to increase the use of renewable energy while saving the college a significant amount of money,” Klein said. The college estimates the solar array will drop its kilowatt-per-hour expenditure from 17 cents to 16 cents.

“Sierra College will see a savings in year one,” Klein added.

Any time we can make our planet a little cleaner and decrease our reliance on foreign oil, while saving money – that’s the very definition of win-win!