The Tamaqua Area School Board on Tuesday approved a $2.66 million buyout of its solar arrays at the Tamaqua and West Penn elementary schools.

The district is now in its sixth year in a partnership agreement for the arrays with Solar Renewable Energy LLC, allowing for the buyout using district capital reserve funds.

“Once the array purchase is complete we will no longer pay the lease fee resulting in cost avoidance of $297,000 per year,” Business Manager Connie Ligenza said in an email last week.

The district will now maintain full ownership of the arrays and the equipment, she said.

The solar arrays power both elementary schools, and the district purchases electricity supply for its other buildings through a cooperative purchasing program with members of the Intermediate Unit 29, she said.

The district had anticipated savings of $100,000 a year in the first five years with solar arrays and $200,000 in savings after the buyout.

Even with increased electricity supply and generation costs since 2019, Ligenza said the district is still paying less for electricity than it did six years ago.

The district’s average cost for electricity from 2019 to 2025 was $242,695, she said.

“By purchasing the arrays with capital reserve funds we not only save the lease fee but the finance costs as well,” Ligenza, who was not at Tuesday’s meeting, said last week.

The board also approved the sale of 3,453 solar renewable energy credits at a cost of $23 each, or just over $86,000. The district receives SRECs for its solar generation.

The district had been quoted $50 and up on the credits when it first ventured into solar in 2019, but due to the increased number of solar fields, the value of these credits has gone down due to supply and demand, Superintendent Ray Kinder said last week.

Ligenza explained that the credits were actually trading at $40 early on, but have now dropped to $23.

These credits are additional revenue the district receives from solar arrays, and to date the district has earned $416,000, she said.