Project Navitas (Latin for Energy) is a collaborative project between Cardinal Wiseman CTC and Birmingham North City Learning Centre.
The
objective is to test the concept of installing renewable energy sources
in schools and to reduce the carbon footprint of Cardinal Wiseman as well.
Following
extensive discussion with the council and local residents, permission was
granted by the council in September 2007 and the mast with the turbine
and the solar cells were installed and are now fully operational. A gallery
of the installation process is in the right panel.
The wind turbine is backed up by an array of solar panels which supplement the
system and will drive a set of computers in the Learning Support Base
(more details).
This is one of only a few installations of a Wind Turbine in a school in the
country and is probably the first in an inner city in England.
Energy from the wind turbine will be pumped back into the school's power grid
and can be re-sold to the national grid if we create excess power (more
details).
The solar panels create power which is stored in a set of batteries which guarantee
power to the ICT suite even when the arrays are not generating power (more
details).
An
exciting part of the project is that you can monitor the enrgy used by
the school and the energy generated by the wind turbine and the solar panels
on the dashboard right here.
This
project has also prompted the school and its pupils to think more carefully
about ideas such as recycling, energy saving and reduction of their carbon
footprint and will, no doubt, be a feature of many classroom lessons.
