The school board chair said district would profit off new schools’ energy. They won’t.

Although the Horry County School District didn’t propose that the five new schools they’re building would be free to operate school board chairman Joe DeFeo said the school district would make a profit off the energy bill.

That won’t happen, according to the school district’s preliminary 2017-18 budget.

In October 2014, FirstFloor Energy Positive CEO Robbie Ferris first pitched to the board a proposal to build five energy-positive schools which would produce more energy than they used and result “in a net check to the school district. So you would have a net check every month.”

One month later, DeFeo said that for every utility bill, the district would get a check for a larger amount.

“There may be times when we buy power and get a power bill, but energy positive means that if you get a bill for $50,000, you receive a check for $60,000,” DeFeo said. “You actually make money off the power.”

The district will not profit off the schools’ electricity and could face for four of the schools an electric bill of around $67,000 per school per year, according to the district’s preliminary budget. One school will cost $52,000.

The total electric bill for the first year could be $320,000. The numbers used in the preliminary budget are just estimates the district is using because rates and contracts for the new schools haven’t been finalized, according to the school district.

Other elementary and middle schools in the district have yearly electric bills ranging from $165,000 to $210,000, according to documents obtained from the school district.

Now, nearly two and a half years later, Ferris and DeFeo say the district won’t make money off power.

“When you start on a project like this, you have to decide, do you want to be cost neutral or energy neutral?” Ferris said at a Feb. 20 board meeting.

But Ferris clarified that the school district, when soliciting bids, put nothing in the contract limiting the amount of power that the schools could produce.

“The school district, when they put their RFP (request for proposals) out, they decided they wanted to be energy positive, meaning you have to generate at least one kilowatt-hour more than you consume,” he said. “That’s what these buildings are designed to do. And we’re confident that they will.”

DeFeo said no one ever proposed that the district could turn a profit off the energy.

“We never said we’d make money,” DeFeo said. “Nobody ever said that. The main savings was the reduction in the power bill. If instead of paying $150,000 a year and you only pay $50,000, that’s $100,000 savings per school.

“It was never, ever proposed to be energy neutral, and energy neutral means there’s no power bill,” DeFeo said. “We’d pay nothing. And that was never even proposed to be energy neutral, let alone the other way around.”

DeFeo did in fact say the schools would make money from the utility bill.

And in a 2016 interview with The Sun News, David Cox, then vice chairman of the school board, described the schools as “net zero,” saying that there would be no energy bill within 10 years.

How did we get here?

On Sept. 11, 2014, the district issued a Request for Qualifications to companies who could bid for three new schools and one replacement school after paying environmental service firm Cardno TEC $875,000 for a district-wide needs assessment.

On Oct. 20, 2014, DeFeo introduced Ferris, who pitched to the board his idea for five energy-positive schools which would produce 40 percent more energy than they consumed.

On Nov. 10, 2014, the board voted to scrap the first Request for Qualifications, and a new request for energy-positive schools was issued Feb. 26, 2015.

The new request required three new schools and two replacement schools: a new intermediate school for the St. James area, a new middle school for the Carolina Forest area, a replacement middle school for the Myrtle Beach area, a new middle school for the Socastee area and a replacement elementary school for the Socastee area.

The request specified that “energy positive,” meant the schools produce more energy than they use, and that the schools are “high performance,” meaning “a building that integrates and optimizes on a life cycle basis all major high performance attributes, including energy conservation, environment, safety, security, durability, accessibility, cost-benefit, productivity, sustainability, functionality and operational considerations.”

The school district narrowed down the responses to several firms, including First Floor Energy, LLC, and asked the firm to submit their proposals.

The board then spent $40,000 on Greenville-area consultant Louis Batson, who awarded each bidder a point value based upon schedule, energy-positive design, and several other criteria. First Floor Energy was awarded the least amount of points.

But a 10-member selection committee made up of five board members chose First Floor Energy, and the board voted to approve the contract for $220 million, going $53 million over the initial budget. An additional $20 million of contingency funds upped the budget to $240 million.

At the time of the vote, some board members expressed their belief that First Floor Energy was the only company who could deliver five energy positive schools, and deliver them on time. Two of the schools will not be ready at the beginning of the 2017-18 school year.

This story has been updated to clarify that FirstFloor Energy's first proposal was not in response to Horry County Schools' Request for Proposals.

This story was originally published March 15, 2017 at 7:21 PM with the headline "The school board chair said district would profit off new schools’ energy. They won’t.."