Photo: Scutter (Flickr)
Showers hall, where the Bloomington city and Monroe County offices are housed, as well as two schools will soon install solar panels.
Monroe County is getting an energy grant worth more than $270,000 to install solar panels on the Showers Building. Fairview Elementary and The Project School are also involved in the project.
They plan to use the new solar panels to promote community energy education. There will be a year-long competition between the city government and the students at the elementary schools to see who best conserves energy.
Monroe County Grant Administrator Ashley Skooglund says meters that monitor energy use called Energy Dashboards are installed at the courthouse and the justice building and each school will also receive a dashboard.
“Students are going to be able to collect baseline date, and they’ll actually be able to see if its making any impact in real time,” Skooglund says.
After the solar panels are installed the system will be the largest solar ray system in the state south of Marion County.
