MAC Earth Hour will be tomorrow period 5. Please turn off all unnecessary lights and electric devices. Team Green members will go around the school and switch off the lights at the start of the period.
This Earth Hour is important as it is the International Earth Hour on Saturday from 8.30 to 9.30pm so it is the occasion to make a difference globally www.earthhour.org
Participate!
If you are interested in power figures and graphs for the solar panels on the roof of the North Block, have a look here: http://solar.mtaspiring.school.nz/index.html . That link has to be accessed on the school network though, it won’t work from home!
Today (overcast), it looks like this:
Earth Hour belongs to you. Celebrate your commitment to the planet with your friends, family, community or at work – in your own way. A simple event can be just turning off all non-essential lights from 8.30pm-9:30 pm.
We had the idea and dream of solar panels at MAC for a few years. To explore the idea further, we met Mark Ayre on the 17 September 2014 to understand better and ask questions. Mark lives off the grid near Hawea Flat. He showed us his solar powered – with battery- mobile phone.
Central Otago is one of the best place in the country in sunshine hours making solar panels a good choice.
Photovoltaic solar panels provide 12 DC electricity from the sun. A converter transforms this power in AC 240 and adds it into the grid.
This solution is very efficient for a school as our peak electricity usage (that is during school) is during sunshine hours. Also during the holidays, the excess production can be sold into the grid, earning us money.
We presented our project to the Board of Trustees who generously agreed to finance some solar panels.
In 2015, we investigated the college roofs with a local solar panel installer and decided to wait for the new buildings. These building are being built in 2016 so our solar panels will be installed hopefully soon. We keep an eye out for them!
