Just days after southern California’s San Dieguito Union High School District installed solar “carports” above parking areas at two of its high schools, northern California’s Jefferson Union High School District (JUHSD), just south of San Francisco, completed a similar project of its own.

JUHSD has installed solar energy systems at four of the district’s high schools: Oceana High School, Terra Nova High School, Westmoor High School and Jefferson High School. The four projects combined, according to AZO Cleantech, add up to a 1.5-megawatt (MW) installation, will use over 8,500 solar photovoltaic (PV) panels and will generate over 2.3 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of solar energy during year one. That’s an amount of electricity roughly equal to the annual needs of 200 typical American households.

Check out this picture, courtesy of Perpetual Energy Systems, of Oceana High School’s rooftop solar installation:

Unlike the San Diego solar energy systems, which are owed outright by the school district, the San Francisco Bay Area solar projects were financed via a power purchasing agreement (PPA) with Perpetual Energy Systems (PES) — a California-based company that specializes in the financing and developing of large-scale solar energy systems. The district will buy the power from PES at a rate lower than what the local utility company would charge.

Over the next 25 years, each school is expecting the clean energy systems to help save three percent on annual energy costs. The district has been planning the solar installations for several years. But in 2008, all four were almost scratched from the district’s agenda due to the national credit crisis that made it difficult to finance any type of renewable energy project. That’s around when PES came to the table and made the projects possible by handling the financing angle. In return, PES will get tax and investment credits.

Here’s JUHSD Associate Superintendent of Business Services Steven Fuentes on how pivotal a role PES played in making these projects a reality:

“In these difficult financial times for public education in California, our district is very excited to begin working with Perpetual. [The company] will allow us to implement a program that will bring in much needed revenue while providing services to our district we would otherwise not have staff to accomplish.”

It’s no secret that California schools have installed more solar energy systems than any other state’s schools in the country. Installing on-campus solar energy systems does two things: it gives schools the opportunity to teach younger Americans about solar energy, and it helps these school districts inch closer to independence from the utility company’s electric grid.