Solar States Blog

Solar States is at it again! With students at the Science Leadership Academy finishing up another great semester of solar design and photovoltaic research, we thought long and hard about what our next step should be in bringing solar education and industry to the Philadelphia area. But in the end, it came down to one simple question: what comes after high school?

College. And in college, the first classes you take are the intro classes, the 101 classes, with names like “Intro to Psychology” and “History of Early America.” This is Green Energy 101.

GREEN BY EXAMPLE is our newest course, teaching you the basics of LEED certification, weatherization, solar and other groundbreaking innovations. Taught by LEED expert Sam Klein (LEED For Homes Quality Assurance Designee), GREEN BY EXAMPLE can show you the investments you should consider and the ones you need to make in order to become LEED certified or just save your family a few bucks. And with guest speakers from the Philly solar and green building communities, we are making sure you are getting the most up-to-date information.

Before Philadelphia students and prospective installers can get on a roof and install solar panels, they have to understand the basics of home and commercial energy. There are natural, creative ways to plug the energy leaks that are harming your environment and draining your wallet. Come learn about them.

And even if you are afraid of heights; even if you can’t tell an inverter from a ballast mount; even if you have no interest in solar at all, wouldn’t you like to know how to stop your house from hemorrhaging energy and costing you a fortune? Get your prerequisite energy knowledge out of the way with Green By Example.

Ok Sales Pitch over. Thanks for your interest in our mission and if you are interested in signing up, we will see you in class!

GREEN BY EXAMPLE: An introduction to Alternative Energy, Weatherization and LEED For Homes

When: Saturday, June 6th, 2009 / Saturday, June 13th, 2009 / Saturday, June 20th, 2009 / Saturday, June 27th, 2009

Where: Northern Liberties Community Center, 700 N. 3rd Street (at the corner of 3rd and Fairmount Sts.)

Time: 9:30am-12:30pm

Cost: $350 for the entire 4-week program. There are 5 spots available to low-income participants.

The experimenting has died down in a sense because everyone is getting ready to go on Winter Break. Currently, we are planning on doing further experiments relating to our sunlight angles. After break, we will more than likely redo the Clinometers experiments if we need better accuracy, or try another form of experiment if need be.

After performing our sunlight angle experiment with the Clinometers (I found out the proper name for them), we found the average sunlight angles. The average angle that sunlight hits our school from the West is 20°. The average angle East of our school is 30°. Using this data, we will know effective angles to set up solar panels on our schools roof so that we can potentially collect as much energy/power/electricity as possible to help towards making our school Green in the future.

We have come to an agreement in class on what type of experiment to perform. In order to find the sunlight angles, we will be doing an experiment based on our 9th grade Geometry projects. We will have a viewing tube attached to protractors with sting and weights. As we look up to see the tops of the buildings where sunlight, the weight will pull the string down and show us the angle at which sunlight hits our school. Each group will have their own viewing/angle device and use it to find the sunlight angles at several different points to get an average sunlight angle in the polar directions, east and west from our school.

Today, our group managed to greatly improve on our experiments from last class. We managed to further compare different potential sources of energy to the miniature solar panels. This was done by hooking up an ammeter to a grapefruit, then the solar panel, then a battery. We found that the battery was the best source of electricity, but we know that the solar panel would last much longer since it can get recharged very easily by the sun and won’t need to be replaced. Overall, I think our second class with the miniature solar panel turned out well.

In Engineering class, we have started an experiment to see whether or not miniature sized solar panels could be useful and efficient to our class, and potentially the world. The group I was part of managed to compare the electricity potentially produced by the mini solar panel, versus that of a grapefruit. It turned out that the grapefruit gave off more electricity than the mini-solar panel, but this is more than likely because there was not a great multitude of light outside and the lights of the room were our main source for the panels. However, we will attempt to improve this upon our next class and try to achieve better results.