Green technology is giving a local school a boost to its bottom line.

Career Institute of Technology said the solar panel project will also teach students the tools of the trade.

"Today, we have a beautiful day to start to grow electricity," said Joe Stemrich, CIT instructor.

At the school in Easton, that electricity is growing in a field of solar panels and soon, on the rooftop of the school.

"We are going to be able to generate electricity and buy it at a fixed rate for 20 years," said Ron Roth, CIT director.

CIT officials expect the savings to reach $640,000, or 18 percent of its energy usage in that time, helping it to use its money for other things.

"We can project budgets, we can save money by knowing that cost is not going to go up," said Roth.

School officials said not only will the solar panel project reduce their energy costs, it will also give their students a glimpse of what their careers could look like in the future.

Pennsylvania-based Tangent Energy Solutions owns the panels and has been installing them over the last few weeks.

"We have been up here a couple of times looking at the fields and getting ideas of what it's like to work with solar and green energy," said CIT student Robert Tarsi.

Tangent is also providing the school a training system so CIT's green technology students get more than book learning.

"The students at CIT are going to get applications knowledge and be able to work with the new solar panel trainers that are coming with this installation," said Stemrich.

The panels are expected to be on-line by next week.

School officials said that's when the real cost savings and the green energy technology learning will begin.