Students at Traverse City West Senior High School are raising money to install solar panels on their campus so they can learn about renewable energy.
Srinergy, a Michigan-based solar company, donated 14 ground panels to the school and students need to fundraise money to cover installation costs. They aim to raise more than $11,000 by the end of this school year.
This story is made possible through a partnership between Interlochen Public Radio and Grist, a nonprofit environmental media organization.
The school’s Environmental Club is leading the effort. Lucy Jones, the club’s president and senior at TC West, said clean energy like solar will only become more common as students get older. That makes this project important for their education, she said.
“It's good for students to learn about it now and learn about how it works, so then in the future, they're able to know about it and use renewable energy in their lives,” Jones said.
The goal of the project is to teach students, but the 14 panels would generate about 7,000 kilowatt hours of electricity for the building. That’s an estimated 5% of the school’s electricity use, according to the project proposal from Srinergy.
Mary Brisbois, a science teacher at TC West, said data from these solar panels could help teach students in her environmental science class about how renewable energy works. Other science and math teachers have expressed interest to Brisbois in using data for their classes, too.
Students are also responsible for fundraising, she said. That way, students can learn that “money is something to figure out” and not always “a complete roadblock,” Brisbois said.
Lyla Hollis is a clean energy specialist at the nonprofit Groundwork Center for Resilient Communities and a partner in the school solar project. She said just seeing the installation of the panels could be beneficial to students.
“Getting the solar panels installed into the electric system is not that hard, but it is a process, and to learn how to do that on a small scale is pretty cool to see,” Hollis said. “The actual steps, you can implement it in different classes and learn how the chemistry works and all that stuff, which is more than I learned in school.”
Jones said she’s optimistic her classmates will raise enough money by the end of the year, with the help of the local community. And she’s excited for future students to benefit, long after she graduates.
“It'll be something that the whole school will get to see and experience and gain information and knowledge from and then on to future generations,” she said. “It's kind of like giving something to the school and giving back to our community.”
