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Projet Karyne - En route pour Kingston! |
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Nous sommes de retour de notre voyage à Kingston! Le voyage était extrêmement informatif et intéressant. Voici un petit résumé de ce que nous avons appris là-bas. Premièrement nous sommes allés à "Frontenac Secondary School" et nous avons posé plusieurs questions à l'organisatrice du projet, Lucille Davies. Cette école avait installé deux paneaux solaires qui étaient tous les deux des paneaux P.V. (Photovoltaïques) (Pour voir une photo de leurs panneaux solaires déroulez jusqu'au bas de la page). L'école avait appliqué au gouvernement pour une contribution financiaire. Dans ce temps là, il y avait (Climate Change Action Fund). Leur projet leurs on couté approximativement 6000.00$ ce qui incluait plusieurs heures de bénévolat. Leur fournisseur 'Plum Hollow' on vendu leurs panneaux "au cout" c'est-à-dire sans faire de profits. À F.S.S., ils n'ont pas d'élèves de 7 et 8. L'école commence à la 9e année. Dans leur classe de science 9e année les élèves doivent construire quelque chose qui fonctionne avec des panneaux solaires. Chaque anée le "Solar Club" de l'école organisent une course de bateaux solaires pour les écoles élémenatiares du secteur. Les élèves de 7 et 8 construisent un petit bateau fait à base de matériaux recyclés et compétitionent pour voir qui finit la course le premier dans une picine. Ils ont aussi fait un concours de dessin avec un prix pour le gagnant encore une fois pour informer les élèves. An interesting project this year was that the school found out about a company who dedicated laptops to a poor country in Africa. The problem was that the school had no electricity to be able to use the laptops. F.S.S. was part of a project that raised money to put solar panels on the school roof which are working now, to provide power to the laptops! This project was done in conjunction with Queens' University. When asked "what would you do differently if you could do the whole project all over again?" the response was that they would have publicized even more to tell the community about the project. It needs to be visible and people need to be told repeately that it exists to get the community interested. As for a phase 2, F.S.S. would like next to invest in a wind turbine. A special thanks to Lucille for organizing this trip for us and for taking the time to share her experiences. ENERGY HOUSE Our 2nd stop was Energy House, which is part of St. Lawrence College. Steve Lapp is in charge there and runs an program for environmental technicians. They have two portables at the back of the college which proudly display many different types of PV panels, solar water heaters and a solar wall.
He generously spent over three hours showing us all about solar technology and answering our questions. Here are some of the things we learned from Steve: - solar panels in our area should have an angle equivalent to the latitude of the location. We should have them at a 40-50 degree angle. But countries at the equator would have them at 0 degrees. - we don't have to clean the solar panels they don't need any maintenance - buying a tracker isn't really worth it because the tracker itself uses energy to turn. it's only worthwhile in countries where there is much more sun than we have. - it probably isn't a good idea to store the solar energy in batteries for the school because you lose energy when you store it. It's better to use it right away or if there is excess to send it back to the hydro grid for money. The Ontario government standing offer now pays you 42c per kW if you put energy back to the grid; they charge 10c per kW for energy you take from the grid. - installing a solar water heater at our school might not be the best use of solar energy. We can't feed solar-heated water into our boilers at the school which are used to heat the school because the boilers work at an extremely high temperature. The solar hot water would have to be chanelled into another heater then fed into the boilers so it defeats the purpose of having solar hot water. We could, however, use solar hot water for our basic hot water tanks. This is a great use of solar energy for houses. For schools, though, since we are shut down all summer long when the most solar energy is available, it is actually bad to have a solar hot water heater sitting in the sun if no water is circulating through it. The water gets too hot and the solar heater can be damaged. For our purposes we may be better off looking at PV Panels or a solar wall. - Greenhouse gas emissions are not the same as smog. Greenhouse gas is directly related to the amount of fossil fuel being consumed, regardless of anti-pollution systems. Smog emissions are related to the pollution your car produces after it has burnt fuel, which can be reduced with catalytic converters. - a good product to use which is free from the government is called retscreen.net. It can be used to study the energy produced by your system and get statistics. - other ways the school can become more environment-friendly are: a) by buying a 'vending mizer' which turns off vending machines when there is no need to have them turned on. b) saving on paper... alot of paper is used in schools. try using the internet more; or overhead projectors if possible
Un groupe du Projet Karyne a été invité à poser des questions à Steven Lapp, consultant de l'école Frontenac à Kingston qui, eux aussi ont mis des panneaux solaires sur le toit de leur école. Nous allons aussi visiter "Energie House" qui est une maison modèle avec toutes sortes de systèmes à énergie renouvelable. Le tout se passera le vendredi 23 mars.
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