by Katie Kizer, intern at the Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation

After six years of searching for a regular science teacher (and solar energy point person) at St. Michael School in Wheaton, Illinois, the school has finally succeeded in completing the solar installation in its entirety. It took 3 years to get the grant, a year to find the installer and get the installation in, and another two years to get a second grant to pay for the data collection system. This is not to diminish the wonderful project at St Michael’s or to complain about the time it took at each stage of the process, but to demonstrate that there can be so much more to such a solar project than simply installing a few panels. This is especially true for a small private school. But it also shows what can be accomplished when a dedicated group of teachers set their minds to something and they bring in outside groups like Illinois Clean Energy Community Foundation, Commonwealth Edison, NEED and the Foundation for Environmental Education to join their team.

Last spring, St. Mike’s was finally able to hook up the software that reads the data with the hardware pictured below. There are 12, 80-watt panels that can finally communicate the coveted data we all wait so patiently to analyze. After all, it is this information that allows us to continue making the case for solar energy and it is this message that the 7^th and 8^th grade science students at St. Michael’s will finally be able to learn comprehensively.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 6th, 2007 at 7:03 pm and is filed under Illinois, Solar Schools . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.