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13 SUMMARY
The project covers photovoltaic installations at public schools in Austria, which came into being
with the program called ÖKOLOG “Fein ohneStaub” that was established fifteen years ago in
order to educate schools about environmental issues.
The goal of this project is to jointly support the environment, make it a better place to live at and
preserve it for the next generation by encouraging sustainable energy sources such as solar
energy in this example as well as improving the level of awareness of alternative sources of
energy.
Furthermore it was also very important to find out the organizational requirements which are
needed for setting up photovoltaic installations, which are things like the process of approving,
sponsoring, financial possibilities and cost savings but also the technical aspect of this process was
in question. Examples are how big does the roof have to be, where do the collectors have to be,
places, could you enter the energy into the net, how often does the installation have to be
maintained and what is the approximate lifespan?
In order to find the answers to these questions, online surveys were implemented. 572 public
schools with and without photovoltaic installations throughout Austria were questioned about
this topic. With the help of the program SPSS Statistics it was possible to obtain the following
results:
The majority of schools with photovoltaic installations are located in northern Austria which
provided the most information about the requirements. It was the northern part of Austria and
the capital, Vienna, which took the biggest interest in such installations.
As the questions were answered, the findings are that there are many advantages but also
disadvantages with the use of solar energy. On one hand you can say that this source of power is
environmental friendly, sustainable, flexible, reliable and money saving but on the other hand it is
a limited, insufficient, seasonally dependant energy model which has very high costs and is also
linked to obstacles that are hard to overcome. Due to missing information it was impossible to
analyze the situation in Europe but nothing was in the way of doing so for the federal states in
Austria.
Again interest in the photovoltaic industry is expected to increase as the prices of photovoltaic
installations are decreasing and the trend of sustainable energy power will be having a different
status in society since the conservation of nature is steadily growing in importance and
commodities like silicon are available in greater extent. Austria ranked in sixth place in the usage
of sustainable power throughout Europe with 27,8%, which is almost one third. Despite these
relatively high numbers, further growth is expected.
In conclusion it is important to consider the ups and downs of the set up of these installations. It
does bring obstacles and higher costs with it but it is profitable in the long run.
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