Rain fell from gray skies the morning the Morgan Hill Unified
School District celebrated the completion of its solar electric
systems at Live Oak and Sobrato high schools. A total of 8,964
photovoltaic panels now cover school parking lots to generate 2.1
megawatts of electricity. That’s enough juice to power about 469
homes.
Rain fell from gray skies the morning the Morgan Hill Unified School District celebrated the completion of its solar electric systems at Live Oak and Sobrato high schools. A total of 8,964 photovoltaic panels now cover school parking lots to generate 2.1 megawatts of electricity. That’s enough juice to power about 469 homes.
Sitting amidst students and public officials at the March 2 launch inside Live Oak’s theater, I listened as city, business and school dignitaries praised the project and those who made it materialize. Some speakers talked about the energy savings for the school district and how that money can now be shifted to education instead of utility bills. Some addressed the environmental benefits, with the solar-produced electricity reducing carbon dioxide emissions by more than 1,900 metric tons a year. And some addressed the all-important issue of finding funding for the $12.4 million project, explaining how Chevron Energy Solutions helped guide the district in obtaining design and capitol costs from the federal stimulus and from the Qualified School Construction Bonds as well as rebates from the California Solar Initiative.
As the speakers went on, I gazed around and observed the high school students. I saw that the real profit of school-sponsored solar energy generation isn’t in saving dollars and the environment. It’s enlightenment. It’s about inspiring America’s young people today to start heading toward a better future, one fueled by clean energy technology. Modernizing schools with solar can motivate these future leaders to strive toward achieving a better world, a world where wide-spread renewable energy sources and energy efficiency are a way of life.
We now live in the greatest civilization ever achieved. We enjoy seemingly miraculous technology and an advanced infrastructure that far surpasses any in the many millenniums people have existed. And our modern civilization, for the most part, is powered by fossil fuels – coal, oil and natural gas. These hydrocarbons have blessed us with a luxurious lifestyle considerably higher than any ever seen in human history.
If people want to continue enjoying the benefits of our advanced civilization, it’s vital for young people today to know where fossil fuel originates. Its primal source comes from a star located 93 million miles from Earth – a star called the sun. The sun’s core is a hellish spot, where the temperature reaches 28.1 million degrees Fahrenheit and the pressure is 340 billion times the air pressure at sea level on Earth. Those extreme conditions allow the nuclei particles in hydrogen atoms to fuse together to form the element helium. The process releases energy.
Every second in the heart of the sun, great reservoirs of heat and radiation are liberated in an ongoing series of explosive bursts from this nature-made thermonuclear reactor. The gamma rays (which are an energy-intense form of electromagnetic radiation) produced in the nuclear process make their way up over many thousands of years through the densely-packed mass of the core. During this journey, these photons lose much of their energy and are transformed into light photons.
After light leaves the sun and passes through space, a tiny percentage reaches our planet. Many millions of years ago at a time before even the mighty reptilian dinosaurs walked our world, the sunlight that streamed to Earth was captured in the process of photosynthesis by plants as small as algae and as large as fern trees. Over the ages, a tiny portion of these plants (along with bacterial animals) were buried by dust storms and mudslides. They eventually settled deep underground in conditions that converted them from carbohydrates into hydrocarbons. The fossil fuels now powering our civilization contain the sunlight energy of ancient days.
The sun’s photons streaming to our planet provide us with cleaner sources of energy than fossil fuels. We can harvest the light by using solar panels – such as the ones recently installed at Live Oak and Sobrato high schools. Thermal solar technology using arrays of mirrors in deserts provide another effective way to collect the sun’s power.
About two percent of the sun’s energy arriving on Earth produces the winds that flow through our planet’s atmosphere. We’ve made amazing energy advances in the past three decades using turbine technology to generate electricity from this breezy source. Winds in turn generate wave power in our oceans – enough to supply all our civilization’s electric needs if we can develop innovative ways to tap into the surges in our seas.
Energy impacts everything and everyone. Today’s young people must understand that fact if they are going to effectively run tomorrow’s world.
Each generation leaves a legacy to the people who follow them. We are obliged to part the gray skies and stream sunshine on tomorrow. By bringing solar to schools, we’ll enlighten young people to see a vision of a bright new dawn in clean energy.
