Sanborn Central receives awards from state wind group

• Image

Nick Miller, left, and Todd Stekl, both sophomores at Sanborn Central High School, work on creating a small wind turbine during a workshop put on Monday by the South Dakota Wind Application Center. Students were tasked with creating wind turbines out of classroom materials, and then each turbine was tested on its energy output. (Chris Huber/Republic Photo)

Talk about it

FORESTBURG — Sanborn Central was recognized Monday for its contributions in the Wind for Schools project, and students learned more about wind energy in a workshop.

The school district received an award for the best school in 2009 and science teacher Tracy Moody, of Letcher, garnered the Best 2009 South Dakota Wind for Teacher Participation award. Both came from the South Dakota Wind Energy Association.

Steve Wegman, SDWEA executive director, said after the presentation that the organization looks at teachers’ evaluations, programs in which they were active, student and teacher participation and community activities.

“Sanborn Central has done a variety of activities in writing, presentations, having visitors and getting comments from the citizens out there,” he said, adding people have stopped at the school to inquire about the turbine. “They have been a very good educator all the way around.”

Awards were presented during an assembly for students Monday morning at the school.

Superintendent Linda Whitney said afterward that she is proud of the district receiving the award. Sanborn Central was one of the pilot schools in the project and the first to erect a 45-foot, 1.8 kilowatt turbine.

Students have been learning about data from the turbine and wind energy in physical and lab science classes for two years.

“Our goal at Sanborn Central is to eventually have a semester course in alternative wind energy as one of our science options,” she said.

Brian Rounds, an engineering analyst for the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission and state liaison for the Wind for Schools project, said the U.S. Department of Energy pitched the project idea to the PUC as a way to teach children about energy and get them interested in engineering.

The world is not in a crisis mode yet in terms of fossil fuels supply, but it will be at some point, he said.

“Probably within your lifetime, we’re going to run out of oil. We’re going to run out of some other fossil fuels and that means we run out of gas,” he said. “We have to think about new ways to generate electricity.”

Matt Bult, a South Dakota State University junior electrical engineering major from Huron who is the lead undergraduate research assistant for Wind for Schools, told students that a 112-foot meteorological tower at Sanborn Central has a couple sensors that measure wind direction, temperature and humidity.

The tower allows researchers to see the history of wind at various times of day and seasons, he said.

Matt Hein, SDSU mechanical engineering graduate student, told students about the production of the Sanborn Central turbine.

On a daily basis, the turbine makes almost 5 kilowatt hours of electricity, he said.

“As of today, your turbine has been running for 742 days, producing 2,114 kilowatt hours of power,” he said. “(That’s) very impressive.”

South Dakota has 412 megawatts of wind turbines installed in the state, compared to just 3 megawatts in 2003, Wegman said.

He explained the features of wind turbines, their functions and shared other facts about them. He also gave details of the turbines being built at the PrairieWinds site north of White Lake.

Mike Twedt, director of the South Dakota Wind Application Center in Brookings, said afterward the center’s largest mission is to get K-12 students interested in science and technology, no matter what the area of interest. Hopefully, he said, the students will go to a school such as MTI or South Dakota State University to further their education.

“They can look at wind or energy efficiency, any of those alternative fuels (or) research,” he said. “Get them interested in that so they start to explore and start down that path.”

After the assembly, freshmen and sophomores created small wind turbines as part of a laboratory workshop conducted by the South Dakota Wind Application Center.

They used PVC pipe for the frame and placed wooden dowels into a black plastic object for the turbines. Then each turbine was tested for its energy output.

Tags: wind energy, news, environment, energy, technology, education, forestburg