With Margie Smith's third-graders setting an encouraging tone with their rendition of "Let the Sun Shine," students, staff and energy leaders flipped the switch on the future Tuesday morning at Evening Street Elementary School.

The sun will play an important part in the future of the school, which now receives about 25 percent of its electric power from a 65-kilowatt array of solar energy.

The power of the sun will be captured in approximately 300 solar panels installed on the school's roof in December. The panels feed electrons from the sun into pipes that feed into a converter, which turns them into power to operate heat, air-conditioning and lights at the school.

While other schools in the area, including three in Worthington, already receive part of their power supply from solar panels, the Evening Street project is the largest of its kind in a five-state area.

"This is a great example of the school district leading the way in the state of Ohio," Mark Shanahan, state energy adviser, said Tuesday at the official commissioning of the solar panels.

The new system will save money for the district, reduce reliance on coal fuels, and help students understand how solar power works, said superintendent Melissa Conrath.

"This is the generation that is going to have solar panels or wind power in their homes," said Evening Street principal Mary Rykowski.

The system was installed by SolarVision LLC.

It was founded by Worthington resident Greg Kuss, who said this has been his dream for 30 years.

"The Evening Street project is the beginning of that dream come true," he said.

The project got its start in June 2008 when Worthington resident Abramo Ottolenghi introduced Kuss, Thomas Van Cleef and Jim Farmer to discuss the possibility of solar projects in Worthington.

The team presented its ideas to the Worthington Board of Education in February 2009, then went to work making the project a reality.

One of the main challenges was to find a way to finance the project without requiring any upfront money from the schools.

That was accomplished through a combination of government grants, guarantees, loans and tax credits, said Alex Skorniakov, who is an Evening Street parent who works for Arshot Capital and helped SolarVision secure financing.

"This is virgin territory, nobody has financed in this way before," Kuss said.

The schools will take over ownership and responsibility for the system in 20 years.

Meanwhile, they will benefit from the energy savings and students will learn from the educational component of the project.

Twenty-five percent is the average of the energy that will be saved by the system. On hot summer days, the system could collect and create more power than could be used by the school.

When that happens, solar energy will be transferred to nearby homes, though the savings credits will be collected by the schools.

A kilowatt hour will power 10, 100-watt light bulbs for an hour. The Evening Street system will provide enough power for 23 homes.

On Monday of this week, 66 kilowatt hours were generated. That could increase 100 times on summer days.

Evening Street students will learn about this system and can track the amount of power being generated through online, interactive computer programming. There is a television screen in the lobby of the school with all of the information, and students can call up the program on their home computers or in their classrooms.