Energy Conservation Operation ~ Mayo High School
The Energy Conservation Operation (ECO) is a newly founded group at Mayo High School this year. Our group is committed to basically lowering energy consumption within our community. We are doing this from the perspective of what the average homeowner can do in this fight against energy consumption. One of the primary projects we are doing right now is buying, or having donated, compact fluorescent light bulbs, and then selling these bulbs for a price lower than consumers can find in the market place at school events such as parent/teacher conferences. These bulbs last on average 10x longer than regular incandescents and use 1/4th of the wattage. Our first donation was by Home Depot, and we were able to get 196 compact fluorescents. We sold all of these at the first round of parent/teacher conferences The money we made from this donation will be put into buying more bulbs and thus trying to perpetuate this project as long as we can.
According to energystar.com, selling all 196 bulbs for the lowered price, we will save the community an estimated $13,000 in net life cycle savings, 90,000 kilowatt/hours and 140,000 lbs. of Carbon Dioxide emissions from the air, when compared to standard incandescent bulbs. This, however, is just one of our projects.
Another project we are looking into quite seriously is installing solar panels on top of our school. Of course a project of this size requires much planning, and thus we are still in the preliminary stages of this project. One long-term idea we had, which would require the group to continue for the next several years, is that we would buy a rather small, affordable solar cell each year for several years until we had enough cells to produce a rather sizable amount of energy, powering a significant part of our school.
One last part of our group that we are just starting to tap into, is applying the creativity of high school students to the energy problem. We encourage our members to think “outside of the box” trying to think of innovative ways we can conserve energy. Whether this be new ways of harnessing wind power, or figuring out the best way to place windows in a room for heat absorption or reflection, or new ways to heat and cool rooms, the possibilities are endless for us to explore.
ECO invites you to attend the Homeowner’s Energy Expo on February 20, 2008. This event is free to the public and starts at 7:00pm at the Mayo High School Auditorium. See the full announcement under the “News” tab (found on the footprint mainpage) or in the Calendar found on the Forum.
by Brian Rodysill, President and Founder of ECO