Community & Business
25 October, 2021
Student save watts at Walkamin school
Three innovative year 5 students from Walkamin State School involved in a Tablelands wide enrichment program where they designed and built a functional wind turbine.
BY YEAR 5 STUDENTS – KAEL, JACKSON AND RILEY
WE are three Year 5 students Kael, Jackson and Riley, working on the Tableland Environmental Educational Centre (TEEC) Science Enrichment Program, proudly from Walkamin State school.
This Enrichment Program is for Year 5 students from all over the Tablelands to work on projects with an environmental focus.
We are the only school on the Tablelands that is participating in the project in 2021 and our project is called Saving Watts.
We believe this project is important because using renewable energy reduces our carbon footprint and reduces the impact on the environment.
By the end of the project we are aiming to power two refrigerators (used for student lunches), using wind and solar power.
We’ve been helped by, and want to say thank you to:
• Cameron from Outback Solar and Outdoors for explaining to us how a wind turbine works
• Mr Kirk McArdle from RAMcar for donating batteries for the storage of power.
• Mr Radke for teaching us how to figure out the maths of volts and amps
• Mrs Kim Forde from the Missing Link, who works with us every week to complete our project.
• Mrs Sandra Charlton from Tinaroo Environmental Education Centre (TEEC)
• And our principal, Mr B (Ric Baruksopulo) We are funding this project from our 2019 Science Enrichment Program” Crush a Can in Walkamin” by Hayden -which is still running.
Money raised from the can project has helped purchase a 500watt wind turbine from Outback Solar.
Mr White, our school groundskeeper installed the pole and the turbine and we will get a local electrician to wire it up to our inverter and batteries.
On September 23 we presented our project to the Tablelands Regional Council and spoke about its benefits to our school community.
When the turbine is connected, we will explain to our fellow school students how it works and how it will save the school money on its electricity bill.
We hope to encourage our generation to be more environmentally energy efficient.
