The plan is hatched

We attended a meeting at Chernoff Auditorium about renewable energy, at which much fun was had by all whilst learning about renewable energy folks in the Kingston area. After the main presentation was over, we spoke to some people on the panel about some of the things they discussed. One gentleman, Steve Lapp, suggested that to get more knowledge and hands on experience with renewable energy, it might be a good idea to get some solar panels ourselves and play with them.

The plan

This sounded like a lot of fun. Here are the basic ideas we’ve been playing with so far:

a solar panel (bought pre-made because these things are too difficult for people without chem labs and alphabet soup after their names to make)

a (or multiple?) wind turbine(s?), made by us. Trevyn’s particluarly interested in the egg beater style. It would be neat to make different turbines and compare them. I’d like to do some computer modeling and research into blade design. Basing these turbines on bike wheel bearings seems like a good idea so far.

a weather station, (lego based?)

possibly powering:
the laptop,
a lightbulb,
the soldering iron?
world domination machine!

Why should we do this project?

It sounds like fun!
It might convince Adina to learn about electronics and soldering.
We’ll learn even more about sustainable energy.
We’ll learn about mechanics.
We’ll learn about programming and such from the weather station and any monitoring stuff we decide to implement.
We’ll learn just how windy it is on our balcony.
We’ll both learn more about electronics (although Trevyn might only learn about application and how annoying Adina can be when you’re trying to teach her things).
It’s something _practical_ that we can do that will let us learn about all this stuff. (not some racing team, I mean come on, I’m not going to get my groceries in those things, what good are they?)
It will look good on our resumes…

Posted in Our "system" |

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