Five Year Reunion
By John Wright
It will be five years this spring since Rio Grande High School had its dedication ceremony for the first photovoltaic system installed in a public school in New Mexico. After several years of meetings on everything from funding the installation to how to keep students from climbing the poles (a square pole is hard to climb), the 1 KW system that was donated by American Electric Power (AEP) finally began feeding back into the grid.
Since then many students have learned the meaning of the word: photovoltaic. Thanks to the SunnyBoy inverter and computer software, students are able to record the system output and graph its performance over time. At Rio Grand High School, we teach these concepts in our communications skills class. One of the major activities of these classes is explaining how a photovoltaic cell produces electricity. To do this, students made models of a PV cell, complete with paper layers and string for the wires. Students then made videos of themselves explaining a solar cell.
Students also research alternative energy sources and applications, including solar-charged electric cars. Students then used their math skills to calculate how fast their hand made cars traveled on a course they laid out on the school patio. This was another way to challenge the students using multi-disciplinary activities.
The photovoltaic system, while important for the environment, is simply a great learning tool. Although it stands on the side of a patio used by many students, it is always funny to find out how many students don’t know it’s there until it’s pointed out to them. Hopefully, after another five years, there will be enough solar and renewable energy-generated technologies that students will hardly notice a solar array here, or an electric car there. But for now, we’ll just keep pointing it out to them.