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Health & Fitness

Brightergy Introduces Solar Education Program to Kirkwood Students

Approximately 160,000 Missouri students enrolled in 75 districts -- including Kirkwood -- individual schools, and two universities, are benefitting from BrighterSchools™, a comprehensive solar energy education program provided by energy company Brightergy.

The educational program is provided free of charge to schools who install solar electricity with the Missouri-based company.  Schools can access any or all three of the program’s resources:  the program’s mainstay component, BrighterClassroom™, developed in conjunction with EarthWays Center of Missouri Botanical Garden; BrighterView™, a monitoring system; and BrighterConversation™, a social media platform and community blog component.

“Energy literacy is very important to us as a company,” said Cindy Bambini, Director of Business Development for Brightergy.   “The BrighterSchools™ program takes an extraordinary topic -- energy -- and makes it approachable and easier to understand.  Our goal is to create greener, healthier schools by providing Missouri’s students and teachers with the resources and tools needed to generate increased awareness about energy, technology and sustainability.”  

In addition to Kirkwood, some of the districts and individual schools in Eastern Missouri currently introducing the educational component into their classrooms include Parkway, St. Louis Priory, St. Joseph’s Academy, Forsyth School, MICDS, and St. Louis Public Schools’ Gateway STEM High School.  Soon to join the solar school ranks are Maplewood Richmond Heights, Osage County R-1, Eldon, Mexico, Fox and Valley Park school districts, and John F. Kennedy and Bishop DuBourg high schools, among others.

Program Components
BrighterClassroom™  includes eight K-12 lessons which correlate to Common Core State Standards and the Next Generation Science Standards.  The materials are designed to not only teach students about solar energy, but also address energy in all its forms. They include project-oriented and real-time lessons that build upon one another and are specific to individual schools and the software they are using to monitor their solar array. Additional lessons and activities focused on energy efficiency will be added in the coming months.

Through access to the online monitoring system, teachers can turn their solar-powered school buildings into learning labs by accessing their solar array’s production data.  Using this data in classroom exercises help students understand, for example, how much energy is produced from the array on a sunny day versus a cloudy one in St. Louis, as well as from similar arrays installed all over the world.

Students at Forsyth School can see their solar array mounted on their gymnasium roof, right outside their classroom window.  They recently cooked s’mores in solar ovens they created. North Kirkwood Middle School science teacher Ruth Baldwin is helping her students understand the differences between manmade fuels and renewable energy through various experiments using the sun and wind.  

“Having access to the BrighterSchools™ lessons and our array via the internet and the mobile app really helps our students understand that solar energy is a real part of our energy future, and a renewable fuel that is abundant and free,” Baldwin said.

BrighterView™ kiosks will provide visitors to the participating schools a visualization of how their solar-energy system works, how much energy it is producing, and the impact of the system on their energy savings and the environment.  Participating schools will also have the opportunity to join the #mysolarschool community blog, part of the BrighterConversation™ component and a resource for schools to start social media discussions and posts about their solar installations.  Parents, teachers, students and members of the community can share in the discussion at http://mysolarschool.tumblr.com, or by visiting a special tab on the school’s Facebook page.

Energy Savings
One 25 kW solar array has approximately 100 solar panels.  Together these panels will produce about 33,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year. This will save each school that gets an array about $3,000 in electricity in the first year.  As utility electricity rates increase over time, the solar energy cost remains the same, which means the savings grow over time -- in most cases schools can expect to save more than $50,000 per array over the course of a 20-year lease.

In addition to the financial savings, the production of energy from the sun’s rays versus the burning of fossil fuels creates significant environmental benefits.  The amount of solar energy created by a BrighterSchools™ solar array is the environmental equivalent* to planting approximately 11,940 trees, driving 11.5 million fewer miles in a car, or eliminating 466 metric tons of CO2 from the atmosphere.


Founded in 2003, Brightergy is a new kind of energy company, empowering organizations to actively take control over their energy - from creation to cost to consumption. The company’s solutions focus on cheaper, cleaner, and more efficient forms of energy – including solar energy, Capstone MicroTurbines, and energy efficiency -- as well as energy management tools and services.  Brightergy focuses on being each client's long-term energy partner, offering transparency, simplicity and insight into their energy usage.  Technology is constantly changing, while the need for energy never will.  Brightergy envisions a world in which everyone thrives through energy independence.

Brightergy has offices in St. Louis, Kansas City, Columbia, and St. Joseph, Missouri,  and Boston, and offers coverage throughout the U.S. The company's strategic alliance partner is Black & Veatch, an employee-owned global leader in building Critical Human Infrastructure™. Learn more at brightergy.com.


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(*) Source - http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/energy-resources/calculator.html#results

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