Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Voiceover (Female): Hamilton Senior High School is a secondary school; we cater for five hundred
students. We are only 4 kilometres from the coast of Western Australia, just outside the
city of Fremantle. Around three years ago we were very, very fortunate to be picked
up in the National Solar Schools Scheme that was jointly funded by the federal government
and also our West Australian state government. Voiceover (Male): The program gave us three
main structures; they are the solar array on our roof with an inverter which is in my
classroom on the wall. We got a seventy two thousand litre water tank and we got a wind
turbine, 1.1 kilowatts. The solar panels, they broadcast their data on the internet
and we access the data from the website. We can get all the daily and the yearly data
and I get the kids to look at the trends and patterns in the solar panel power production
and how that compares to the wind turbines. We get data from the wind turbine that's got
a little SD card in the box and we can take the data from that card and process it in
an Excel spreadsheet. Voiceover (Young Female): You don't get a
lot of sun in winter, so the turbines a good idea.
Voiceover (Young Male): Usually the sunny days, doesn't really have much wind so the
solar panels would be producing quite high energy levels.
Voiceover (Young Male 2): And when it is very cloudy and windy that means the turbine would
work more and the solar panels wouldn't get so much power.
Voiceover (Male): If you've got both systems you can generate power irrespective of the
weather. With the rainwater tank the kids realise that we are able to grow produce using
rainwater rather than scheme water. We monitor the water level in the tank using the water
level monitor on the side of the tank. So the whole thing sustains itself. We grow produce
from the rainwater; we eat the produce, the scraps we then put back into the garden. We
also sell the produce, generating income to grow the whole project even further. The most
significant benefit is without doubt the educative aspect of these facilities. The kids are starting
to get their heads around it now they understand how these things work and whether or not they
can incorporate these sorts of technologies in their own backyards.
Voiceover (Female): So the National Solar Scheme has been very, very powerful in improving
student outcomes at Hamilton.