Sales pitch for Beta Test #4 to “customer”

So if you have been following this Blog you know that over the past month I have been working on the KidWind Mobile Learning Laboratory or easier said, “The Bus”.

The Bus, is a workshop on wheels, that drives up to a school, where an individual teacher/s (max two) spend up to 4 hours doing hands on learning activities using KidWind equipment and models to learn how electricity is made from the wind and sun. 

They choose from a list of over 30 hands on activities to increase their knowledge and understanding of how the wind and the sun are used to produce electricity from this renewable resource. Hopefully they will take some of this new information and activities into their classrooms and engage their students. This can then lead to more hands on activities dealing with the design, building and testing of model wind turbines and model solar PV (photo voltaic) systems for students that want to continue learning more about Renewable Energy technologies today!

Thirty five years ago in a week long class, in the summer, offered by the MREA (Midwest Renewable Energy Association) in Custer, WI I learned how to design, build and test a real solar PV system with battery storage. Inverters were not developed yet.  This was state of the art technology at the time taught by a pioneer installer from the area, Jim Kerbel. As a Tech Ed teacher I had an interest in this new technology and wanted to learn all I could and bring what I learned into my high school electricity classes.

As the class started out with the design for the pole mount and racking for the 10 panel 500 watt 24 volt PV array system got under way the formulas and calculations involved had a few of the participants wishing they had paid better attention in their math classes. When Kerbel saw the flustration they were going through he said, 

“Don’t worry when it comes to renewable solar energy all you need to know is how to write a check.”  

That stuck with me. As a teacher I decided that if I was going to be writing any checks in the future for renewable energy I wanted to know darn well what the money was going for and why it was needed! I thought it would be good for my students also and I did, through Renewable energy projects I did, and shared with them. If your interested look up articles I published in Home Power magazine #74 Dec 99/Jan 2000 “From Solar Cells to Brain Cells Students Make the PV Connection, #82 April/May 2001 “Wind Odyssey” #111 Feb/Mar 2006 “Real World Solar Energy in the Classroom.

Just like students are the customers in education. Teachers are the customers for the Bus (KidWind Mobile Learning Laboratory) 

Meet Brady, first year middle/high school Tech Ed teacher in Darlington. Brady graduated from Darlington and actually remembered visiting my shop when his 5th grade teacher Mr. Ackerman brought his class over to see the renewable energy projects at my home. 

I wanted to introduce Brady to the Bus, how it worked and what hands on leaning activities I could offer in the Bus. The present Tech Ed teacher does a lot with renewable energy and coaches several KidWind teams. He is moving to the high school Tech Ed program this year. Brady, will be new to the middle school program and what was taught there. Brady volunteered that his knowledge and experience with electricity and renewable energy was minimal. It would be reasonable to believe that some renewable energy subject material taught would be less. To give him a taste of what he could experience in the Bus I had him design and build some blades for a rotor that he would mount on a preassembled KidWind Nacelle and measure how much electrical energy that would produce in the wind tunnel.

He did just that and experimented with making several changes in his design, gear ratio selection and pitch of the blades. He could see the value in the hands on approach and problem solving. 

I left Brady with the Index List of thirty different hands on Renewable Energy learning activities that he could choose from. I asked that if he wanted to be a “Bus Customer” he should then select 8 to 10 hands on experiences he would be interested in working on with me, in the Bus like we did, for 4 hours this time. Also he needed to pick dates and times before school starts Sept 2nd he would be able to do it.  He now works full time for the Wisconsin Wye plant in town, he’s starting his first teaching job and will be an assist, coaching football soon.

Will Brady become a “Bus Customer” (KidWind Mobile Learning Laboratory) customer ? Stay tuned.

Serious Fun learning about Renewable Energy

 

A picture is worth a thousand words. Kaitlin and Allison from the UW Madison WEI (Wisconsin Energy Institute) Spent 4 hours in the Mobile KidWind Learning Laboratory getting some hands on experience.

From the list of possible hands on learning possibilities they choose #’s 71, 41 and 69. They started with #41 - Assemble a GEN-X ac generator. This is a new addition that will be coming to the KidWind program soon. It will allow students to design, build and test a radial AC generator. They will wind coils for a stator and wire them to produce either single or three phase AC electricity. Then they will have to rectify the AC output to DC for the KidWind challenge. Similar to what Pedro did last week, Allison and Kaitlin were able to look at a model preassembled GEN-X and then took parts from another kit to build one of their own. Some parts in the kit were missing and had to be borrowed from the model. Once they had their model assembled they tested it to see if it produced electricity. It did. Then they had to disassemble their work and put the model back together like it was to start. All this took about an hour but they now have the experience to draw from if they are given this task to do again in the future.

Next they wanted to work with planetary gears, #71. They first looked at a standard single step 1:8 ratio using the spur gears used in a KidWind Nacelle. Experiencing the differences in speed and torque by spinning KidWind Nacelles with 1:16 and 1:32 ratios. Then they did the math to understand how the tooth ratios between driving and driven gears resulted in the ratio. Then actual planetary gear sets from an auto transmission, Dewalt drill and 20 watt dc generator were examined. The input shaft of the 20 watt generator input shaft was turned 1 revolution and the output shaft of the generator was counted. The result was a little over 5 and 1/2 rotations. Giving a ratio of 1:5.5

Now the planetary gears were exposed and identified and defined. Sun gear, planet gears and ring gear. The gear teeth on the ring and sun were counted. To get the total number of teeth on the planets they added the teeth of the sun to the ring gear. (NOTE: if all of this seems long and complicated then you are getting the reason for the bus and hands on experiences for the teachers. Just ask Allison and Kaitlin.)       

Anyway then they did some of the math and after a few tries got the numbers they got in the verification they did at the start. They now have a good start on learning more about and working with planetary gears like the ones in real wind turbines that they see.

Lastly they wanted to Assemble a yaw system for a wind turbines #69.  After learning what a yaw system on a wind turbine does using a small model and movable fan. They were ready to build their own. They put together PVC pipe to allow the Nacelle to be mounted on the tower but also swivel. Then they used pipe hangers and threaded rods to mount the tail they cut out of cardboard to the main part of the yaw system. Then they attached a premade set of blades and tested it in the KW wind tunnel to see if it kept the blades facing the wind as the base of the tower was rotated.

Again IF you find all this long and confusing you are getting the picture of what the Mobile KidWind Learning Laboratory bus can and will do to provide teachers with hands on experiences that they can share and use in their classrooms to better cover renewable energy and specifically how electricity is produced from the wind and the sun. Teaching about the future of renewable energy in their classrooms TODAY!

Allison and Kaitlin having some serious fun learning about renewable energy on the bus.

Do you have any thoughts or comments about this idea about providing this opportunity to interested teacher?