GREENVILLE, Mich. (WZZM) - Some students in Greenville are doing their own study of the weather this summer and learning about the potential of renewable energy.
There is now a weather station atop Greenville High School. Students are using it to study wind speeds and solar panels.
"We're trying to figure out variables like whether the height of the photovoltaic cells matter, of the angle to the sun or cloud cover, or shade versus direct sunlight. Trying to see where we get the best readings," says student Courtney Hester.
Student Megan Winters says before the class her knowledge of renewable energy was limited.
"I didn't really know much about it and that's why I took it, because I might want to do something in the career field, in science because it's a developing field."
Teacher Brian Sullivan says renewable energy is part of Michigan's future as well as the students' future.
"We're learning about things that can be used later on. These students may never take another class in renewable energy technology again. But from this class they can certainly go home and purchase or build from their own materials a wind turbine or solar panels, and put it on their house and generate some power. And being able to do that may just save them some money."
In addition to learning about solar energy, students went on field trips to energy related sites, and are studying the potential of wind energy.
"We've built a wind turbine. And the group that I'm in we actually built a weather station, which collects the rain and the wind speed and all of that stuff," says Winters.
And they are doing it themselves, because they are interested.
"I actually recommend a class like this for the year, an actual scheduled class like this for the whole year to get more people involved with it," says Hester.
The class is funding partly by the Greenville Area Community Foundation. It's a science elective, so the students chose to spend three weeks this summer learning about renewable energy.
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