Schoolyard Solar And Shade Retrofit Design

ISEF Category: Earth and amp; Environmental Sciences

Subcategory: Other  ·  Difficulty: Advanced  ·  Setup: Home Setup  ·  Time: Full Year

The Hook

A schoolyard can work like a power plant, a sponge, and a heat shield at the same time. Your job is to find the best balance. One design can lower heat, cut runoff, and still make electricity. That makes this topic a real systems problem, not just a roof survey.

What Is It?

This project asks you to design a schoolyard retrofit that gets multiple benefits from one site. You are not just asking, "Where can solar panels go?" You are asking, "How much power can the site make, how much shade can trees add, and how much stormwater can the landscape hold back?" That mix of goals is called co-benefits, which means one change helps in more than one way.

Think of the schoolyard like a chessboard. Every move changes several pieces at once. A new tree can cool pavement and absorb rain, but it can also block sunlight from panels. A solar canopy can make electricity and keep students cooler, but it may cost more than a simple ground array. Your project compares those tradeoffs with models, maps, and cost estimates.

You will likely use site maps, sunlight data, tree-shade tools, and runoff estimates to score different retrofit ideas. The goal is not to find one perfect answer. The goal is to show which design gives the best mix of energy, shade, water control, and cost for your school.

Why This Is a Good Topic

This is a strong science fair topic because you can test real design choices with public data and modeling tools. You can compare different layouts, species, roof areas, or stormwater features and turn each option into numbers. The project connects to climate, school safety, heat reduction, and water pollution, so the real-world stakes are clear. You also get room to learn GIS thinking, energy modeling, and cost-benefit analysis without needing a university lab.

Research Questions

• How does changing the placement of solar panels affect estimated annual electricity production at a school site?
• What is the effect of adding tree shade on summer surface temperatures in key schoolyard areas?
• Does a combined solar and tree design reduce runoff more than a solar-only or tree-only design?
• To what extent do different retrofit layouts change the cost-benefit ratio over a 20-year period?
• Which roof, parking lot, or courtyard area gives the best balance of solar output, shade, and stormwater control?
• How does tree placement around a school building affect the amount of panel shading across seasons?

Basic Materials

• Laptop with internet access.
• Local school site map or satellite image.
• Measuring tape or online map measuring tool.
• Notebook or spreadsheet for design comparisons.
• NREL PVWatts web tool.
• i-Tree tools for tree benefits and shade estimates.
• Free stormwater calculator or local watershed planner from a city, county, or state agency.
• Spreadsheet software such as Google Sheets or Excel.
• Public weather and solar data from NOAA or NASA.

Advanced Materials

• GIS software such as QGIS.
• Drone or aerial imagery if school permission allows.
• Detailed campus CAD drawing or parcel map.
• Local utility rate data and net metering policy documents.
• Custom Python or R scripts for scenario scoring.
• Building footprint and roof slope data.
• Species-specific tree growth and canopy data from city forestry sources or USDA materials.
• Hydrology model inputs from local stormwater manuals.
• Carbon accounting data from EPA or the state energy office.

Software & Tools

• NREL PVWatts: Estimates solar electricity output for different panel locations and orientations.
• i-Tree: Estimates tree benefits such as shade, cooling, and runoff reduction.
• QGIS: Maps the school site and layers solar, tree, and drainage features.
• Google Sheets: Organizes scenario scores, costs, and benefit comparisons.
• NOAA Climate Data Online: Provides local weather and solar context for your model.

Experiment Steps

1. Define the school site boundary and pick the retrofit zones you will compare, such as roof, parking lot, and courtyard.
2. Build a baseline model for today’s solar potential, shade conditions, and runoff behavior.
3. Choose a small set of design scenarios that change only one or two features at a time.
4. Set up a scoring method so you can compare energy, shade, stormwater, and cost on the same scale.
5. Test how sensitive your results are to tree placement, panel tilt, canopy cover, and local weather assumptions.
6. Rank the scenarios and explain which tradeoffs matter most for your school.

Common Pitfalls

• Treating the schoolyard as one uniform surface, which hides how roof, asphalt, grass, and trees behave differently.
• Mixing real site measurements with generic city averages, which can make your solar and runoff estimates too optimistic.
• Letting tree shade and panel shade conflict without checking seasonal changes, which can flip the best design from summer to winter.
• Comparing costs without separating upfront cost, maintenance, and energy savings, which makes the analysis incomplete.
• Using one benefit metric and ignoring the others, which turns a co-benefit project into a single-purpose design.

What Makes This Competitive

A stronger project goes beyond a simple layout comparison. You can test several site plans, then use a transparent scoring system that weighs energy, shade, runoff, and cost. Strong entries also defend their assumptions, such as tree growth, panel spacing, and local rainfall. If you add sensitivity analysis, you show which design stays good even when your inputs change.

Project Variations

• Compare solar canopies over parking lots versus rooftop panels for the same school site.
• Model native trees versus fast-growing shade trees and compare their long-term cooling and runoff effects.
• Add a stormwater garden or bioswale to the best solar-and-tree design and measure how much the ranking changes.

Learn More

• NREL PVWatts: Search the NREL website for the PVWatts calculator and user guide to estimate solar output for real locations.
• i-Tree Tools: Find the free suite on the U.S. Forest Service site to estimate tree shade and ecosystem services.
• QGIS: Download the free GIS software and use its tutorials to map campus features and compare retrofit scenarios.
• NOAA Climate Data Online: Use NOAA’s database to find local weather, rainfall, and solar context for your site.
• EPA Green Infrastructure Resources: Search EPA for stormwater design guidance and schoolyard runoff examples.
• Google Scholar: Search for review articles on urban heat islands, schoolyard greening, and solar canopy design.