Past Event
2020-10-09
【Climate Eco Tour】CTU Training Centre (Shek Lei Campus)
The first Eco-Tour was successfully held on 9 October 2020. It took place at the Shek Lei Campus of CTU Training Centre under CTU Education Foundation, which is our "SolarCare Partner". 108 pieces of solar PV panels were installed for the centre, with a daily electricity yield of about 137 kWh. Enabled since April this year, the system has reduced carbon dioxide equivalent emissions by 16,000 kg, which is a sum equals to the electricity generated by 65 households. The solar PV system was installed on the rooftop of the centre, such that participants could observe it from a close distance.
The participants of this tour are students from the Ying Wa Primary School. In the morning that day, 11 students first had a seminar in the centre classroom to briefly learn about climate change. Mr Ringo Mak, Programme Advisor of CarbonCare InnoLab, started by explaining the history of the Industrial Revolution, then highlighting how human activities lead to global warming, and how renewable energy such as solar energy can help mitigating climate change.
After acquiring some basic knowledge, students went up to the rooftop with Mr Ken Tai, Project Engineer of CarbonCare InnoLab, to visit the solar PV system. The special feature of this system is the use of double-sided PV panels to allow sunlight to pass through. At the back of the panels are batteries that could draw support from the sunlight refracted from the ground after passing through the PV panels to increase the electricity of the system. Students were curious about the solar panels and asked many meaningful questions. After understanding the operation of the double-sided PV panels, a student immediately thought of installing one more PV panel under the current panel, such that cyclical refraction would be generated between the two panels. Some students even had anticipation of a solar city, along with a design of a large-scale solar power station being depicted. Although these ideas were bold, their creativity and originality deserved a total encouragement. Without imagination, human beings would never be motivated to create hypotheses and innovation, which is where inventors came from!
Back to the classroom, Ringo further introduced the characteristics of various renewable energy sources, and featured some small solar home appliances (such as fans and charging pads) to students, to expose them to some practical instances of solar energy applications. This tour was hoped to inspire these primary school students, so that they will continue to enrich their insight of renewable energy and climate change afterwards, and ultimately get empowered to help to contribute towards a more sustainable society.