A rendering of the proposed alternative fuel energy lab at Ponaganset High School.

Courtesy of Ponaganset High

GLOCESTER — The Foster-Glocester Regional School District has received a $984,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to advance two major initiatives that district officials say will put Ponaganset High School at the forefront of the alternative-energy movement.

U.S. Sen. Jack Reed joined district and town officials at a ceremony in front of the high school yesterday morning to discuss the high school’s planned Alternative Energy Laboratory, which will help students study alternative-energy resources, and the innovative boilers that will burn wood chips to heat both the high school and middle school.

“From the start, the aim has been to make Foster-Glocester a recognized leader in how we teach our children, how we build our buildings, and how we select our resources,” said Regional Building Committee Chairman Gregory Laramie.

Reed said yesterday that he hoped the energy lab would further Ponaganset High’s “pioneering role” in energy education, providing students with the technological skills to successfully compete in the global economy, and the district with a model curriculum to offer to other schools around the country.

“Generations of students here can learn about alternative energy and prepare themselves for a world where alternative energy will be central to our success as an economy,” said Reed, a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee. “It’s a very exciting moment when you can see practical progress –– lowering the cost of energy for a school system — and also see the education of young people who can take this knowledge forward to the next generation.”

Acting Regional School District Supt. Michael Barnes said that the grant pays for the renovations of a former classroom for Computer Aided Design, located at the rear of the former high school, into two labs.

One lab will be a multimedia lab with teleconferencing capabilities so that students can collaborate with other schools and organizations working on alternative energy, said Barnes.

The other lab will include a bay door to allow classes to study and work on automobiles that use alternative fuel technology. Two such projects have been in development by science teacher Ross McCurdy and his classes, a pickup truck that runs on biodiesel fuel and a car that will someday be powered by fuel cells. “Enhancing teaching and learning is what this is all about,” said McCurdy.

The grant will also pay for the installation of solar panels and a wind tower in the rear of the school as well as hydrogen fuel-cell technology for student projects.

The other major initiative the grant will fund is what the district calls a Biomass heating system.

Wood-chip boilers at the high school and middle schools will heat the buildings at nearly one-fourth the cost of conventional oil, according to Barnes. “It means that money may be used for educating students instead of paying utilities,” says Laramie.

Financing of the boilers, which are touted as the first of their kind for any school in the state, goes toward a larger package of energy-saving measures that the district is installing at the high school and the middle school.

That overall project includes taxpayer financing of a $14-million bond awarded to energy-service provider ConEdison.

Barnes says the two alternative-energy projects –– the energy lab and the woodchip boilers –– complement the district’s ongoing renovation and merger of the high school and middle school at Anan Wade Road. The district is spending $45 million approved by voters to unify the schools into one large high school.

“No other students in the state will have this opportunity,” said principal Dennis Kafalas. “It makes learning relevant and meaningful to students. And it makes me the envy of all my principal colleagues.”

pmarcelo@projo.com