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    Fresno Unified School District and ForeFront Power Partner on 17.5 MW Districtwide Solar and Storage Portfolio

    March 15, 2024
    The completed portfolio is expected to save the District over $40 million throughout its 20-year life. It includes 40 different projects with solar canopies and energy storage systems across 31 district sites in California
    ForeFront Power
    65f477fd85759d001e3ad24d Forefront Power

    Fresno Unified School District and ForeFront Power, a developer and asset manager of commercial and industrial-scale solar energy and storage projects, have partnered to introduce a 17.5 MW districtwide solar energy and storage portfolio.

    The completed portfolio is expected to save the District over $40 million throughout its 20-year life. It includes 40 different projects with solar canopies and energy storage systems across 31 district sites in California. 

    The labor used on the projects was from contracting services based out of the Fresno region and helped create 56 new local jobs in the process.

    The portfolio will generate 23.5 million kWh of clean, renewable electricity - enough to power the annual electricity usage of over 3,000 nearby homes. It will also help the District offset over 18,000 metric tons of CO2 emissions annually, which is equivalent to removing nearly 3,600 cars from the road each year.

    The partnership not only helps the District access a real-time performance monitoring platform, allowing district officials to create reports and visualize related environmental offsets and savings but also includes customizable renewable energy curriculum support to enhance STEM education programs for Fresno Unified students.

    "ForeFront Power takes care of every aspect of solar energy solutions for our partner school districts like Fresno Unified," said Nate Smith-Ide, Senior Sales Manager at ForeFront Power. "We want to give public school districts an alternative to expensive, unpredictable energy expenditures with guaranteed performance and low costs from renewable energy solutions."

    ForeFront Power implemented smart battery storage systems suitable for the District's solar canopies. These systems help during moments of maximum electricity usage to minimize the impact of peak charges from the utility and deliver electricity costs lower than a solar project alone. 

    Fresno Unified selected ForeFront Power through the Renewable Energy Aggregated Procurement (REAP) Program offered by SPURR.

    About the Author

    EnergyTech Staff

    Rod Walton is senior editor for EnergyTech.com. He has spent 14 years covering the energy industry as a newspaper and trade journalist.

    Walton formerly was energy writer and business editor at the Tulsa World. Later, he spent six years covering the electricity power sector for Pennwell and Clarion Events. He joined Endeavor and EnergyTech in November 2021.

    He can be reached at [email protected]. 

    EnergyTech is focused on the mission critical and large-scale energy users and their sustainability and resiliency goals. These include the commercial and industrial sectors, as well as the military, universities, data centers and microgrids.

    Many large-scale energy users such as Fortune 500 companies, and mission-critical users such as military bases, universities, healthcare facilities, public safety and data centers, shifting their energy priorities to reach net-zero carbon goals within the coming decades. These include plans for renewable energy power purchase agreements, but also on-site resiliency projects such as microgrids, combined heat and power, rooftop solar, energy storage, digitalization and building efficiency upgrades.