Desert Solar Journey
Solar panels are a way for an individual to create a tradable commodity: electricity. It often goes unappreciated that even a middle school student is able to create a tradable commodity. And we are not talking about growing a few grains of rice and eating it at home; electricity can be traded for money by any anonymous person with a computer, the internet, and some electricity. In terms of educational philosophy – energy independence is a pillar of the systems thinking that we teach to students of middle school and up. That could be literally electricity, like it is in this case, but it also includes time, money, and even motivation. Esoteric, perhaps, but we can also boil it down to “creating what you want”. In the end we are all required to do so, we are just not taught many ways to accomplish the tasks, nor given many explanations about the systems behind energy. Exerting your personal preferences is a tough skill for students to gain personal advancement from, because they rarely have support and mentor-ship in discovering their preferences. MakeFashion Edu excels at that. But once you are able to set your own course, knowing the rules of the system is key. the craigslist posting for our used solar panels The goal is for students to gain experience with the energy economy by remotely controlling the orientation, storage, and expenditure of energy. Enter: our desert solar panel project! In 2020 Hot Purple Energy, a solar installer in Palm Springs, California, donated 4 solar panels to kick off our project. We quickly grew it finding a company on Craigslist that had removed old but working panels, and was selling them for a great price. Our desert land has lots of sun, so why not let our students have access to it? We were teaching 100% remotely at the time as well! Our progress, in brief, is that our solar and DIY batteries are running and online, but still need an orientation motor system. We currently let students choose from several fixed orientations. Also, the energy gets consumed by our computers in San Francisco, so it’s not the same “electrons” (but also, it never is), and we keep a ledger to account for it. If any teachers would like to know more, feel free to contact me, and I’ll also be posting details about the batteries, inverter, etc! The post Desert Solar Journey appeared first on SteamHead .