About two years ago, the head of the private Wheeler School in Providence launched a green initiative that led to big cutbacks in use of electricity, paper and water, field trips on Rhode Island Public Transit Authority buses and even a “green” roof on a new building. Now, the school has taken one more giant green step — installing an array of solar panels on its field house in Seekonk.

The $650,000 project produces enough electricity to take the Seekonk campus off the grid, according to Dan Miller, the head of the school. It also stands out as a readily visible example of the school’s commitment to doing and teaching sustainability.

“We’re excited because we wanted to do this for the kids, but in a way that’s cost effective,” Miller said last week. “Everything we are doing has a curricular dimension that teaches at our ‘grass-roots’ level, while also making a strong public statement about the importance and viability of environmental sensitivity.”

The school didn’t set out to go solar with its field house. Miller said solar experts from Alteris Renewables, the Bristol-based solar power company, first looked at buildings on the school’s main campus on the East Side of Providence.

Only later did they visit the 120-acre campus in Seekonk. Miller said, “That’s when things started coming together.”

The Van Norman Field House has a steel roof that faces south and is pitched at the ideal angle for solar panels, with no additional infrastructure needed, Miller said.

The panels are designed to produce 100 kilowatts of electricity, enough to power the field house, a building that houses sixth-grade science classes and small buildings on the campus.

Because of an energy audit, the school took steps to reduce energy use on the campus by 50 percent, cutting annual electric bills from $30,000 to $20,000.

A state incentive program in Massachusetts kicked in $250,000 toward the capital costs of the solar panels. A third-party financing program allowed investors to pay for the system, with Wheeler buying its electricity from the investors.

As a result, Wheeler got to make an expensive capital investment in its campus without having to raise the big up-front costs. It retains an option to buy the panels from the investors at a later time, if finances allow.

Bob Chew, president of Alteris, said the company can make solar work on about 75 percent of the buildings it looks at. The school was lucky to get the incentives, he said, because that program has run out of money.

Rhode Island is offering $8.6 million in subsidies for solar and other forms of alternative energy this winter. As a result of incentives here and in other states, Chew said his company is as busy as it’s ever been.

“There’s a lot of pent-up demand,” he said. “Next year will be a strong year for renewables.”

Sol Taubin, a junior at Wheeler who is co-president of the school’s Environmental Concerns Organization, says she sat in on early meetings with Alteris and she learned a lot from the conversations.

“We’re really lucky to be in a school that does all of this,” she said. “The school’s commitment to environmental action is really good.”

plord@projo.com