A Brunswick County school served by Brunswick Electric is among four schools recently awarded a grant from NC GreenPower. The grants are part of the Solar Schools program, providing matching grants of up to $10,000 for 3-5 kW photovoltaic (PV) arrays on each participating school’s campus, including a weather station, real-time monitoring, and a curriculum and training for teachers.
BEMC is committed to providing technical support for the solar project at the school, The Center of Applied Sciences And Technology (COAST) in Bolivia, with potentially more involvement in the future.
The solar project won’t be the first grant funds the school has accessed to introduce students to clean energy technology: A COAST teacher received a 2018 Bright Ideas grant from BEMC to support an electric vehicle project. Using electric go-carts, students collected data from the battery-powered vehicles and compared it against data collected on hydrogen fuel cell and gasoline-powered vehicles.
More information about NC GreenPower’s Solar Schools program is available at ncgreenpower.org/solar-schools.