Sep. 7--Smithtown's school board has approved a $6-million energy conservation project that includes what is being touted as the largest combined solar panel installation at any Long Island school district.

Approximately $1.2 million of the project will pay for the solar panels which will be housed at 10 of 14 school buildings in the district: Dogwood Elementary, Mount Pleasant Elementary, Saint James Elementary, Accompsett Elementary, Accompsett Intermediate School, Great Hollow Intermediate School, Nesaquake Middle School, High School West, High School East and the Joseph M. Barton administration building. One of the schools, Great Hollow Intermediate, will have two systems on the roof, totaling 11 systems in all.

Mark Dougherty, manager of distributed generation and renewable programs for LIPA, said Smithtown is one of 16 Long Island school districts that have installed or will soon install solar panels.

After $495,000 in rebates from the Long Island Power Authority and state aid offsets, the solar panel system in Smithtown, approved last month, is estimated to pay for itself in 4 1/2 years in terms of energy savings, said Joe Piro, the district's plant facility administrator. The system's life span is 25 years.

Installation should be completed by the end of the year, Piro said. The district will bond $4.37 million for the project.

After taking part in an energy audit with Johnson Controls of Armonk, the district plans to spend the remainder of the $6 million on other energy savers, including changing to incandescent bulbs and adding motion detectors, replacement of windows and weather sealing, computer software to power down electronics not in use, and sensors in soda vending machines. Two new boilers will be installed at the Nesaquake Middle School.

"The new boilers replace others that are almost 40 years old," Piro said. "It's about a 12 percent efficiency increase."

School Superintendent Edward Ehmann said savings from those initiatives could be approximately $140,000 a year.

Piro, who worked for the energy conservation group at Grumman during the energy crisis of the 1970s, said lower prices for the solar panels made this a good time to purchase the systems. The estimated kilowatt savings, he said, is estimated to be 147,660 kilowatt hours annually.

Smithtown School District, along with East Meadow and Bethpage, is also taking part in a LIPA program that brings specialists into middle schools to train teachers on how to instruct students about renewable energy and recycling.

Ehmann said he has great hope for the program's success, adding: "We're teaching the importance of recycling and conserving energy. It's a comprehensive approach to being proactive."

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