As it’s often said, the real world can be the best classroom. That’s precisely the idea behind an assignment students in Teaching Professor Chuck Stone’s ENGY 320 Renewable Energy course received: to individually design their own field trips to companies or organizations involved in renewable energy or sustainability and come back with a report.

“It was wide open,” said Stone as students showed off their posters and reports during the Forum on Renewable Energy at Colorado School of Mines, Dec. 6. “If I had told them what to do we wouldn’t have this depth and breadth of projects here. I was incredibly impressed with the variety and creativity.”

The field trips took students from solar companies to train stations and even elementary schools.

Senior Katherine Bony contacted engineers at Wheat Ridge based Major Geothermal learning how engineers at the company access heat energy from below the earth’s surface.

“I learned all about the different types of geothermal [systems]. I originally thought there was only vertical, but there’s horizontal, there are slinky loops. It all depends on the thermal conductivity of the ground,” said Bony.

Bony’s experience also led to an internship opportunity with the company.

Senior Kristen Heiden reported on her experience working with civil engineers working on the LEED certification for the Union Station redevelopment project in Denver.

“What I think is really neat is Union Station has a big waste management system,” said Heiden. “They use waste material to help in the construction, but they also recycle a lot of it.”

Heiden also learned how engineers are making the building greener by installing skylights, improving indoor air quality with large fans and planting gardens outside the station.

“It’s a great look at what we can look forward to as engineers when we’re actually designing things,” said Heiden.

Other projects showcased included a bike that measures electrical energy produced from pedaling. The project could be taken to middle and elementary schools as an interactive lesson about energy.

Stone’s ENGY 320 Renewable Energy class is part of the energy minor at Colorado School of Mines. For more information, click here.

Take a look at a solar panel on a sunny Colorado day and, if you’re like most people, you won’t see much more than a blinding glare. Mark Lusk sees wasted opportunity.

“I see that glare and feel how hot the panels on my roof get and say, ‘What a waste! We’re losing energy!’” says Lusk, a Mines physics professor and solar energy researcher, who admits to checking out his panels and their energy output more than most. On a clear day, he explains, only a fraction of the photons hitting the photovoltaic cells on his roof are converted into electricity—the rest bounce off as light or are lost as heat. On a cloudy day, or as dusk approaches, the long-wavelength, low-energy particles of light are scarcely enough to produce any juice at all. On average, just 20 percent of the sun’s rays actually get converted to energy in a contemporary solar cell.

“In terms of efficiency, there is a lot of room for improvement up there,” he says.

Fueled by a six-year, $12 million grant from the National Science Foundation, Lusk and his colleagues at the Renewable Energy Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (REMRSEC) have spent the last four years working to improve that efficiency via a complex merging of nanotechnology, quantum physics and computational wizardry known as “exciton engineering.”

The nascent and controversial field hinges on the manipulation of “excitons”—the combination of an excited electron and the hole from which it is dislodged by an incoming photon. In conventional photovoltaic cells, the exchange is generally one-for-one; upon impact, a photon creates an exciton, which sends a highly energized electron racing into an electrical circuit.

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Learn more about Mines research in renewable energy here.

A group of Mines students and faculty are collaborating with area teachers, college professors and school administrators on a project aimed at enhancing education in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) fields, particularly as they relate to sustainability and energy.

Initiated in 2010 by members of the Red Rocks Foundation board, which includes former Mines president John Trefny, and funded by a three-year grant from the Community First Foundation, the Red Rocks Institute for Sustainability in Education (RISE) includes partners at Red Rocks Community College, Colorado School of Mines and Jeffco Public Schools.

... read more at minesmagazine.com.