By Bill Resch

In Columbus, Ohio, New Albany High School students and teachers have created an “off grid” solar powered nature preserve trail lighting system using Solar Panels donated by American Electric Power (AEP).

Twelfth grade student Student Samantha Lustig’s Senior Community Service Project included teaching approximately 250 students, in twelve physics classes, about solar energy concepts and applications. The students helped with site preparation, installation, and connection of the solar powered trail lights. In addition to assembling and wiring the lights, sophomore students dug a trench for the underground wiring. The 30 trail light posts are spaced over 360 feet, beginning at the student-assembled 1 kilowatt Solar Panel, and running through the school’s wetland preserve, ending at the Band and sports practice field.

The light posts line the trail and allow students and local residents to walk safely to and from sporting events and through the nature preserve at times when daylight is dim in the early mornings and at dusk when wildlife may be more visible. The concepts of “Energy Transfer” and “Conservation of Energy” through our Solar Energy Project are now a permanent of the school district’s physical science K-12 curriculum.

Athens, Ohio was the site of a perfect storm – a perfect solar storm. Dr. Paul Grippa, principal of Athens Middle School, received a call a few years ago to see if he was interested in getting a solar system installed on his school. “Absolutely!“ “American Electric Power donated the solar panels as part of AEP’s Learning from Light Initiative and the project took off,” according to Glen Kizer, President of the Foundation for Environmental Education.

The 1kw system had panels donated by American Electric Power. This install was funded in part with an Athens Foundation Grant. Third Sun Solar& Wind Ltd – also of Athens, donated the labor. Third Sun now has over 100 system installations under their belt in Ohio. When I asked Geoff Greenfield, president of the company, where they came up with the name, he answered, “Michelle and I had two boys when we started – the company was our third..”

Ben Appleby, Executive Director of Sierra Club’s Appalachian Ohio group had volunteers there to help with the installation. Mr. Appleby, a project manager for Third Sun, spearheaded the project. One observer notes, “The project would never have gotten off the ground without Ben’s interest in giving something back to the local community in order to educate our youth about the impact of our energy choices on the environment, and his ability to work with all of the individuals and organizations that made this possible.”

And what and impact the project has made! The Ohio Sierra Club website quotes science teacher Dylan Crawford, “Now solar power is more than a picture in our textbooks, its right here on the side of our school making power that we can actually use.”

During the installation, Geoff Greenfield observed, “The Ohio state science curriculum actually has a renewable energy component – so the science teachers were really excited to have this teaching tool on their building!”

Ohio State Science Academic Content Standards for grades 6-8:
C. Describe renewable and nonrenewable sources of energy (e.g., solar, wind, fossil fuels, biomass, hydroelectricity, geothermal and nuclear energy) and the management of these sources.

The school has real-time data monitoring:

http://view2.fatspaniel.net/PV2Web/merge?view=PV/detailDC/HostedAdmin&eid=41937

Students, staff, and the public can log on to see how much power is being generated. Variables such as temperature, length of day, clouds and air quality can be explored. Greenhouse emissions avoided and historical data can also be viewed.

Dedicated September 25, 2006, Mayor Ric Abel, Commisioners Mark Sullivan and Bill Theisen, Councilwoman Debbie Phillips, school staff, students and parents were there to celebrate.

*Historical pictures courtesy of the City of Athens photo gallery.

2008 is almost upon us. As we close out the year, we’d like to share reflections and some ideas for surging the sun in the year ahead. Here is a perspective from this year’s American Solar Energy Society conference, held in Cleveland, OH. It’s being held in San Diego this year – May 3-8. In fact the two largest solar conferences in the nation (ASES and SEPA/SEIA) are both being held in San Diego this year…help make 2008 a surging year for the sun! Put these events on your calendar.

Story submitted by Alex Kizer

Driving through downtown Cleveland, Ohio for the American Solar Energy Society (ASES) convention, last July, I couldn’t help but notice the decomposing warehouses, standing vacantly among the boroughs of the gentrified districts of the “Mistake on the Lake.” I was passing by the stage where many steel workers presented their empty plea to future-looking authorities; the ensuing death that inevitably destroyed the antiquated industry of the past shined today in the presence of my brand-new hotel.

My grandfather, born and raised in Cleveland, was one such loser in this battle with the “Technology Age.” Invisible hands have actually brought impending unemployment to both my grandfathers, but that’s the beauty of capitalism, right? In all truthfulness, that’s correct. Regardless of our forefathers’ exclamations, such as, “You can’t find a shoe made within the continental United States, anywhere!” this is the way things work in our globalized world. I have to ignore it when my grandfather calls and asks, “Where can I get an American-made television? Our Sony is busted and Walmart only has Samsung in stock.” I never have the heart to tell him there’s no escaping international trade.

Having the solar energy convention in Cleveland is exactly what the former proprietors of Cleveland had in mind when they put an axe to their industrial economy. “Someday,” they might have said over cocktails at a local aristocratic dinner, “the sons and daughters of the bone-broke factory men and women will thank us. They will be able to discuss alternative resources as plausible supplements to an economy that needs to go in that direction, anyway. Also, they will be able to buy Japanese TVs at discount prices.” Or they’d say something similar to that tune.

It’s sad to say but they were right. Cleveland—much like I hope for the rest of America—was able to effectively cut their losses when it came to the costly economic dead weight of the steel industry; an industry that was physically dangerous for workers and extremely costly to run when compared to the low-cost of steel imports and the high-cost of American labor. But for solar energy, the evolution I am referring to requires a little more complexity, as the dangerous and costly industries that I’m suggesting (oil and coal) have permeated American and global life even further than the omnipotent steel industry. The oil and coal industries are, without a doubt, economic juggernauts with seemingly infinite resources around the world. Everything runs on, eats up, uses, and digests some form of these two resources. For America, however, a similar opinion was held by U.S. migrants less than a century ago regarding the aforementioned metal (steel). From Cleveland to San Francisco, America embodied ample land, so much land it was thought it would take centuries to lay the necessary tracks. America followed the economic path of least resistance and benefited from it resoundingly.

If Cleveland was opening its once bitter doors to an alternative energy convention, then maybe there’s hope of incorporating solar energy into our national economy on a real level. Because this year’s ASES convention wasn’t in Florida or California, but, instead, in Me-o, Oh my-o, Oh-Cleveland Ohio, the more I thought about it the more I felt satisfied with our country’s current state of events. When can someone actually say they’re participating in an event that proves that the Midwest might someday evolve economically? Well, I can.

The ASES convention exhibits the Midwest’s openness to the technologies “of the future.” Even though I embody the enemy of my grandfathers—Idealists, who at one time were, as my grandfather put it, “trying to move American jobs to Outer Space”—I am beaming to see if the economic evolution of Cleveland is, in fact, a microcosm for the potential evolution of our economy on the national scale. If a large Midwest city can open its doors to a new type of resource; if a people surrounded by their fallen industry can accept their evolving economy as a must; and if non-progressive citizens recognize their current oil and coal consuming trajectory as problematic to America’s power (both home and abroad), then I am optimistic that our economy can evolve and incorporate alternative energy solutions in the same way that Cleveland left steel for something more safe and more effective. Parking my car in the lot, I walked up the underground tarmac to find the Cleveland Convention center and then my businesses’ (Solar Resource Corp.) booth. I was excited to see if others had come to the same conclusion as I had.

Before I stepped into the convention center building, I stopped and looked at a gigantic wind turbine that sits before the convention center on the Lake’s side. Watching the long white blades swipe across the tall blue sky, I couldn’t help but wonder why Cleveland was so frequently referred to as the “Mistake on the Lake.”

Story submitted by Barbara Revard

Nearly ten years ago the Columbus Zoo and Aquarium realized the need to build a new barn for our goats, sheep, ponies, llamas and chickens. This realization was no small endeavor as these domestic animals are easily one of the biggest attractions to our youngest visitors!

As with most planning projects, we quickly had too many GREAT ideas! What began as a little red barn ended up as a new region of the Zoo, Habitat Hollow, a “place with space for everyone”. The main attraction of Habitat Hollow is My House, an interpretive storybook house where our guests are engaged with the natural beauty of habitats found right in their own backyards. The educational theme for My House highlights the beauty and diversity of North American habitats and the diversity of life found within them.

The Zoo made a commitment early in the planning process to engage community partners in exploring innovative building processes and practices. The Solid Waste Authority of Central Ohio (they manage our local landfill) assisted us in collecting polystyrene lunch trays from 70 schools in our area. When cleaned, those trays were an ingredient in a manufacturing process, along with concrete, to create building blocks which form the exterior walls of My House. Literally, the trash that built the House. Other green elements are detailed in the illustration below.

Certainly, when talking about living more lightly on the earth, energy consumption is a topic to discuss.

The Zoo was assisted in installing a 1 kilowatt solar system on My House, by:

• Third Sun Renewable Energy (especially Geoff Greenfield)
• American Electric Power who donated the solar panels (especially John Hollback and Paul Loeffelman)
• The Foundation for Environmental Education (especially Glen Kizer)

The panel is functioning both by producing electricity, and also as serving an educational opportunity for our guests. Inside the kitchen of the house are a meter and an interpretive panel. When visitors exit the kitchen of the house, a solar panel is visible on the roof overhead. One of the main intentions at My House was to highlight actions that our visitors could participate in at their own homes. While some families might be able to invest in a solar system, apartment owners might find container gardening on their patio the best fit. We just hope to provide options and inspiration for various green endeavors!

No home would be complete without a garden shed and ours is illuminated with a light tube, also courtesy of the Foundation for Environmental Education. The small unit fits into a hole in the roof and sheds light throughout the interior display. Guests are always surprised when they realize that the light in the shed is all provided by one small, unobtrusive light tube.

Don’t think we forgot about the goats and the ponies that started this project! My Barn also contains green building materials including reused timbers from an old barn, recycled content siding, shingles and a rain barrel. Habitat Hollow also uses an old fashioned windmill to power the aeration pump in our farm pond.

You might wonder, “Does the exhibit work?” We have been conducting evaluations for 4 years now and feel good about the overall learning and understanding of our original messages. More to the point though, we received a letter from a mother that really made us smile. Her family had visited the exhibit several times and the young boy always paid attention to the panel in the kitchen which shows the story of the reclaimed polystyrene lunch trays. When his birthday came around the 7 year old asked his mother if they could have party and not use any throwaway goods – no paper plates or polystyrene cups for him! Instead he wanted to have party which would use reusable goods. Message received!

Story submitted by Alex Kizer

“Build a small, sufficient solar array on a man’s house; he saves money and uses clean energy. Build a large, sustaining solar model on the man’s community center; his community saves money and it teaches everyone how to help save the environment.”

Listening to Dave Merrill, the President of SunAir Systems, make this proclamation, while sliding my work gloves up to my wrists, I began to get a little nervous about what I had volunteered to do: Assist in the installation of a 1 kW photovoltaic (PV) system on the roof of Upper Arlington High School. I am Solar Resource Corp’s Corporate Development Coordinator, and while I know everything about the schematics, the logistics, and the productivity of solar arrays—Photovoltaic or Thermal—I didn’t know anything about getting my hand’s dirty or the physical act of installation. I told Dave, “I can help you coordinate the installment, but I’m afraid I’ll screw something up, or attach the wrong wires if I am involved in the actual installation.”

My entire life, I have always wanted to be more blue-collar. I want to be more like my grandfathers and work with my hands, building. I am not sure where this compulsion comes from, but I like the idea of building instead of destroying. Destruction is much easier than building—a wrecking ball takes a button, but erecting a building takes work—and for someone who likes to be in control, there’s nothing more satisfying than hands-on building, creating.

That’s why I got into solar in the first place. Building a renewable resource infrastructure in a society where it’s just too easy to continue on our way, destroying our bodies, our air, and our homes, is the easy way out. Literally, it is pushing the button. It is the way we have always done it because no one wants to do the building. Well, not no one.

They say in politics that it takes years to move stones, and lifetimes to move mountains. Well, it’s a good thing for solar that the sun is high enough and—mountains or no mountains—all we need is a group of devoted individuals, who focus on building instead of destroying, to do great things for our community.

As the group dispersed Dave and I went to the building’s roof for inspection. The day before we had made the same trip onto Upper Arlington High School’s roof, but this time I was there as a participant and not an examiner. The plot Dave had lined out was still there, empty, and awaiting something. Like an empty puzzle spot in the middle of the puzzle’s board; this twenty feet plot was waiting to open up an entire community to a new way to do things.

My first task was to line up the 25 solar panels and strip them of their old electrical wire and replace each with a new one. I found the positive-charge ends of each panel—each panel has one end with a (+) and one end with a (-), just like a battery—and screwed in the appropriate wiring. The job was tedious, but I had no idea my skills of replacing the battery of my guitar pedal would be the only prerequisite needed to build the intra-circuit of the solar panel model.

“Perfect job,” Dave said as he looked over my ‘electrical’ work. “When those are finished we’ll get them to the roof for the display.”

“What do you mean?” I said.

“We’re going to the roof to attach the panels together. We’re building the display,” he said. Taken aback, I went back through my rolodex of knowledge of the various auxiliary power systems, and found Photovoltaic: The circuit is made up of a collector (Panels)—check—of a charge control (a conduit running from the display into the building), and DC/AC inverter (which takes the power from the sun and basically runs it through the wires in the form of usable energy), and the AC load center (turning the DC power into AC which is how the power is used). I guess Dave was right; next stop, putting the collector together in the form of the display. Seems too easy.

While Titan Power Solutions (one half of Solar Resource Corp’s joint-venture) was craning up the materials onto the roof of the High School, I paused for a photo op. I thought the best way to document this construction would be to take pictures of the progress of the build, so I had my camera ready at all times. The only problem I found was the quickness of the job itself. While I was working I forgot to take pictures.

As I became saturated in the melodic instructions given by Jim Groeber, I didn’t realize I was wiring the panels together onto the newly constructed frame. “Hey Dave,” I said, “I’m writing this article about the progress of this display but I forgot to get some more photos before we began installing the panels. Do you think we could take a few panels off, and reapply them so I can get some photos?”

You’re killing me Alex,” he said. “If we really need to.” Even though Dave was unhappy about my request, I found that one of the other gentlemen helping with the construction took a few photos of me, hands dirty, installing the panels. I told Dave those would work. “Never mind Dave, thanks,” I said.

With the display complete I wiped my brow and looked around at the tools and the small group required to complete (what I thought was) such a daunting task. The community of individuals on top of that roof saw past the politics of renewable energy—the name calling, the slander—and were the perfect balance of realism and idealism.

The notion that as an individual one can help the world is, without a doubt, idealistic. However, no one in Solar Resource Corp, Titan Power Solutions, or SunAirSystems wants to “fix” the world’s energy problems. What we want is to help by leading by example. It is like what “The Boss” once said, “You can’t start a fire without a spark.” And our aim is to show communities the plausibility of solar, then the rest will come with the combustion.

Looking past the High School I could see the Upper Arlington community of homes and rooftops; each rooftop representing potential space for energy savings, and each homeowner representing someone who could make a difference. I wanted to scream and say, “Complacency isn’t cool and change is inevitable, can’t you see that?” But I didn’t scream because Solar Resource Corp already had a plan for that community and I was standing on it. The High School was to be a shining example of the feasibility of solar technology and I was beginning to believe it was simple enough for residential construction and use, as well. I admit, before the day began I would be scared to death to tell someone installing solar in their own home is easy because I have a terrible poker-face. But it only takes a confidant teacher like Dave Merrill to share the know-how, and a small group of able individuals, and the rest is sun-baked cake.

Community Partners:

• Jim Groeber: did not charge any fee for the installation
• Dave Merrill: flew in from Illinois to help with the installation
• Solar Resources Corp: financed the project and supplied labor for free
• Titan Power Resources: coordinated the installation and supplied the lift
• American Electric Power: donated the solar panels through Learning from Light
• Upper Arlington School District: Paul Craft is the point person
• Upper Arlington High School Environmental Club
• Sustainability Roundtable of Central Ohio: Solar for $1.00 per day concept started here
• Foundation for Environmental Education: coordinated the project

In 1998, American Electric Power (AEP), one of the world’s largest electricity providers, started an initiative called “Learning from Light.” It was a simple idea created by Paul Loeffelman and Dale Heydlauf and John Hollback of AEP. The plan was simple. Small solar electricity systems would be added to schools in a way in which the panels could be visible to the students at those schools. In the past many solar electricity systems had been installed so that the entire system was hidden on the roof. It was efficient, but it wasn’t all that effective.

“Out of sight, out of mind.”Paul Loeffelman had the idea to put the panels down on the ground at the top of poles so that the panels would be visible to the students at all times. The initial installation went in at Bluffsview Elementary in Worthington, Ohio.

They went further by combining a teacher training piece to the initiative and initially AEP personnel visited classrooms to help explain electricity and solar electricity to the students. This aspect of the program has been coordinated by Mary Kay Walsh and Barry Schumann over the last 8 years, but is primarily administered by the NEED program, the National Energy Education Development Project.

It was the Principal of Bluffsview, Donna Kelly, who came up with the idea of a celebration after the installation. Paul Loffelman liked the idea so much he made it part of every Learning from Light project from that day forward. At the first one at Bluffsview, they had US Congressman Ralph Regula and Dan Reicher from the US Dept of Energy, and a long list of presentations and awards by the Worthington School Board members, the Mayor of Worthington, a County Commissioner. Every student at the school wore a T shirt, had a button, and wore sunglasses. It was a huge event attended by more than 700 people and is still the model used today by solar school projects all over the US. The keys according to the rule set down by Paul Loeffelman, “one hour and we are out of there.” And this can be difficult with politicians attending every ribbon cutting because, as we all know, they often have trouble cutting their talks to 5 minutes or less, but to this day we seldom have a problem with it. In fact, at the Washington Lands ribbon cutting in Moundsville, West Virginia, the Governor spoke…and kept his talk to about 7 minutes.