IRMO, S.C. — This week, four brand-new solar energy panels were installed at Irmo High School.
This comes through a partnership with Dominion Energy to teach students about renewable energy.
Peter Lauzon has been teaching at Biology at Irmo High School for 20 years and after a year-long process, he has helped bring this new educational tool to the school, “We had this amazing opportunity sponsored by Dominion to get a solar panel for Irmo High School. The neat thing about this solar panel is that it comes with a lot of bells and whistles- it comes with curriculum and guides and four teachers were set up to be trained in the curriculum.”
The Solar for Students program focuses on providing students the chance to learn first hand about harnessing solar energy.
“As a student, it’s hard to tell how much energy we actually consume and produce," says senior Corali Kimura, "especially in COVID times we use a lot of technology so it's really cool to be able to track how much energy we’re using.”
“A lot of our students don’t realize but this is our future and having it here and saying this is something that we’re aiming towards," Lauzon says, "fossil fuels won’t be around forever and we have to look at renewable fuel sources and this is our attempt to get started here!”
Students can track their system’s data online and compete with other schools to see who generates the most reusable energy.
Other schools in the Midlands participating in this program are Eau Claire High School, Dent Middle School and Gilbert High School.