Windmill to help students learn about energy

PALMER — Teaching the Valley’s best and brightest just got a little more energy efficient.

On Friday, officials from the Mat-Su Borough School District, Matanuska Electric Association and Susitna Energy Systems raised an electricity-generating wind turbine on the campus of Sherrod Elementary School.

The idea began in the playground, principal Mark Hoffman said. Sherrod’s recreational area is laid out to match the map of Alaska. A line of boulders marks the Aleutian Islands. A dirt hill marks Denali. A plaque signs the end of the Iditarod in Nome.

Hoffman said he heard about the plans to put wind turbines on Fire Island. He started thinking about putting mock windmills to teach the students about alternative energy.

“The project grew from there,” he said.

Hoffman said he found a program called Wind for America, and a subsidiary called Wind for Schools. Eight states around the country are registered with wind turbines on school campuses, and the first school was one in Colorado where Hoffman’s wife happened to be a past teacher.

Through this connection, the Colorado school became a resource for Hoffman in his quest. Sherrod is the first school in Alaska to have a turbine, and Hoffman hopes to be a resource for others in the state looking to install similar equipment.

“If Wind for Schools accepts Alaska as a registered state, we can coordinate our efforts with other schools,” Hoffman said.

The $25,000 SkyStream turbine was paid for largely with money left over from Sherrod’s construction bond after the school was completed five years ago, Hoffman said. Added to this were in-kind donations from groups around the Valley.

While the turbine will only generate 2.4 kilowatts per hour — a fraction of the school’s energy consumption — the educational opportunities are enormous, Hoffman said.

Sherrod teacher Sean Williams said teaching fifth-graders about something as abstract as energy is tough without concrete examples, he said.

“They tend to think of energy as something that is used up. Batteries go dead. Fuel is burned. It’s hard to explain to them how it is generated,” Williams said.

The turbine gives him a tangible teaching tool to explain the concept. With the installation of a weather station atop a nearby basketball poll, the students will be able to calculate what wind speed will generate how much energy.

“It’s really an inspirational thing. It’s to show the students that you can generate energy from wind,” Hoffman said.

Contact Todd L. Disher at todd.disher@frontiersman.com or 352-2252.