Dec 15 2010
During the previous ten months, a total of 1.8 MW of DECK Solar PV Panels have been mounted on the rooftops of 16 Public Schools in Denver.
The Solar Visionaries such as Namaste Solar, MP2 Capital, Oak Leaf Energy Partners and the School District wanted a two pronged benefit from the project, renewable solar energy production and also deliver the educational impact of the generated energy into the classroom. Hence an in-class curriculum was created having solar monitoring as the main lab component.
According to Lauren Coyne, Namaste Solar’s Education & Outreach Manager and Co-owner, installing a solar PV module on a school would really be advantageous to the students. The solar monitoring would furnish vast amount of data that could be useful for making the students gain knowledge about the technology, its benefits and also the factors that have an impact on production. The DECK monitoring solution is user friendly and can be traversed by both students and teachers. The ‘How Solar Works’ screen gives information on the system components in an easy and understandable way for students of all ages. The students can compare the different data sets over several periods of time to perceive patterns and draw their own conclusions by using the versatile graphing function.
Schools of different sizes from Massachusetts and Hawaii are opting for DECK Monitoring. Freeman Corbin, DECK Monitoring’s Director of Sales and Co-owner, revealed that the company’s key target was to encourage and enable clean energy. This could be done by educating the next generation about the benefits obtained from solar energy. He further stated that they were committed to producing more innovative educational aids.
Stephen Kane, who is the Service Director and Co-owner of Namaste Solar, was all praise for the DECK Monitoring staff as they were able to keep up with them for all the 16 different locations where the technology was deployed inside the ten month period. According to Kane, the DECK staff was able to provide solutions to all the challenges that they had to face during the deployment.