Sustainability and environmental care are core themes woven into the fabric of Spanish education. The Fundació Escolàpies embraces a practical approach to this principle, integrating eco-friendly practices into daily school life. The foundation has advanced a solar self-consumption program across its network, installing photovoltaic panels in ten of its schools distributed through the Valencian Community, Catalonia, and the Balearic Islands. The project is executed by Cubierta Solar, a seasoned Alicante-based company with extensive experience in the sector.
Energy sustainability is a defining pillar for this educational institution, which also prioritizes energy independence and cost savings by leveraging daylight to illuminate classrooms, power laboratories, and run school kitchens. On the rooftops of its ten centers, solar installations have been completed, expanding to eleven systems in total. These locations include Masnou, Figueres, Gandía, Igualada, Olesa with two campuses, Barcelona Llúria, Barcelona Sant Martí, Palma, Sabadell, and Valencia. More than 400 photovoltaic modules across the eleven installations deliver a combined capacity of 213 kilowatts, generating about 310,428 kilowatt-hours per year and avoiding roughly 85 tonnes of CO2 emissions annually.
The Fundació Escolàpies expects substantial ongoing savings from solar self-consumption, projecting annual reductions of more than 52,000 euros. This initiative aligns with a broader sustainability policy that covers environmental, social, and economic dimensions.
The photovoltaic rollout at these campuses was undertaken by Cubierta Solar, an Alicante company specializing in industrial self-consumption solutions. The project spanned six months, with the firm handling logistics and installation teams in each region and providing comprehensive oversight to ensure smooth execution and high-quality results.
With more than a decade of experience in industrial self-consumption, Cubierta Solar has accumulated over 100 megawatts of installed capacity across 300 photovoltaic rooftop and on-site systems, plus about 14 megawatts in battery projects using lithium iron phosphate (LFP) technology. Through its national network of offices, the company can support projects of varying scope and scale.
According to the company, Cubierta Solar has reinvented itself by introducing a new solution that combines photovoltaic self-consumption with industrial battery storage. This approach delivers renewable energy that is affordable and available from eight to twenty-two hours each day, year-round. It also offers substantial savings, reducing the cost per kilowatt-hour by up to 80 percent during non-solar periods. In addition, it provides a Power Purchase Agreement option that eliminates the need for any upfront investment by the customer.
Cubierta Solar has earned multiple accolades, including the Renewable Self-Consumption National Award in EnerAgen’s tenth edition, the Retina Eco Small Business Award for Innovation, and the Technological Innovation Award from the Alicante Chamber of Commerce.