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City's First 'Net-Zero' Energy Efficient School Opens on Staten Island

By Nicholas Rizzi | September 10, 2015 7:59am
 P.S. 62 has numerous features that will eventually produce as much energy as it consumes.
P.S. 62 in Staten Island Opens
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ROSSVILLE — A "net-zero" school that promises to produce as much energy as it consumes opened its doors for the first day of classes Wednesday after four years of planning and construction.

Architects hope to use it as a test case for future schools.

P.S. 62, at 644 Bloomingdale Rd. near the intersection of Woodrow Road, has solar panels, geo-thermal wells to heat and cool water and several other features that make it the first "net-zero" school in the city.

"It's a bit like the moonwalk," said Roger Duffy, an architect for Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), which designed the building. "Nobody's really worked on a school like this in the country."

"It's beautiful," said Mike Newell, whose 4-year-old daughter Marianne Newell started school there Wednesday. "I can't wait to get inside and see what it looks like."

Aside from obvious green features like large solar panels on the roof, the design contains several elements dedicated to cutting down on energy bills, Duffy said.

The classrooms, which will eventually house 444 students in pre-K through fifth grade, were built with windows facing directions that would catch the most sunlight and avoid excessive use of electric lights. The ceilings are shaped to push sunlight into the rooms and the walls are insulated so it lets very little air out, Duffy said.

During the four-year construction and planning for the $70 million school, Duffy said the team looked at every possible way of saving energy including making changes to how the kitchen — one of the biggest energy users in a school — works and trying to cut down on extra power usage by making shared spaces.

"Can a group of classrooms share a printer? Can we make the teachers' lounge a little bit better?" Duffy said.

"We used that to engage the DOE, which is going to operate the building, to understand better what they were looking for."

They also designed the building to be future proof, Duffy said, so they can easily plug in new green technology in the future.

Duffy said his team plans to stay with the project for several more years to track how the building's used so they can eventually reach their goals of "net-zero."

"It's going to take us a couple of years to tune the building to the point until its running at a net-zero capacity," he said.

"Even though the students are in there, it's going to take a while to fine tune this apparatus to achieve the goals we set up."