QC gov’t wants schools to go solar

The Quezon City government is eyeing a public-private partnership project to develop solar panels in city schools to reduce electricity bills by 50 percent.

“What we want to do here is to tap alternative energy sources for all these school buildings,” Mayor Herbert Bautista said in a recent city business summit.

Bautista said there were 180 buildings in the city’s 96 public elementary schools and 46 high schools where the solar panels could be installed.

First on the city government’s list were its biggest schools, Commonwealth High School and San Francisco High School, which have a combined annual electricity consumption of P5.04 million.

“We envision PPP projects that can be of assistance to our city schools, while also creating business opportunities,” he said.

He noted that the city government was also replacing about 10,000 high-pressure sodium bulb streetlights with LED or light emitting diodes to slash by half about P300 million in electricity bills.