SPP Elementary teaches about 300 students in classrooms cooled only by fans — the principal cannot afford to run air conditioning, and the school’s aging breakers struggle with even that load. Tyler’s project asks a sharper question than “should a school go solar?”: because a school’s demand peaks exactly when the sun does, does a tropical school get a fundamentally better return on solar than a home does?

“The inherent diurnal load-synchronicity of tropical educational institutions yields a significantly higher Internal Rate of Return than residential profiles, by optimizing the Coincidence Factor between peak irradiance and institutional cooling demands.”

What he’s done

• A real on-site load audit of the school: 12 classrooms, 4–6 fans (75W) plus a computer setup per room, school hours 7:30 AM–4:00 PM, and a monthly electric bill of ₱4,000–6,000 — including three aging breakers flagged for a technician
• A Monte Carlo simulation (1,000 iterations, 25-year lifecycle) comparing school vs. residential solar economics
• A specified system: 10 kWp — 18–20 PERC panels, a 10 kW three-phase inverter, racking rated for 250 km/h winds, and net metering — with vendor quotes, a memorandum of agreement, and commissioning and monitoring protocols planned

The $19,500 goal includes $12,000 for the 10 kW system plus a long-term-impact buffer. First donations are in — $290 documented so far — and the project is actively fundraising.