As I?ve written in my previous report, my friends and I did some research on sustainable energy development within our school facility. In this article,   I would like to focus on solar power. There were two types of solar energy generation in our school: Solar heat and sunlight. Out of these two, we did an extensive research on electricity generation based on sunlight.

           What we worked on was the relationship between weather and the actual amount of electricity generated from sunlight. We gathered daily, monthly, and yearly data from the generator, and did a couple of analysis using data programs. The result was close to what we expected in the first place, but we were able to discover some surprising facts.

           First of all, sunlight generation did not have any positive relationship with the temperature. In fact, it was just the opposite. While most of us believe that solar energy generation would be much more active in the summer than any other season, it is actually the lowest. Although this is the case of Korea, and the results may vary from reason to reason depending on the climate, it came as a big shock. We later concluded that the results were related to Korea?s rainy season in the summer. Although we expect summer with most sunlight, it had the least because of the cloudy atmosphere.

           Second, the research showed that solar energy production had a startlingly similar relationship with the energy use in our school. The energy use in our school was highest in December and March, as seen in the graph below. The interesting fact was that solar energy generation also had a similar graph, with the generation rate at its peak in March and October.

           This series of research in our school taught us that renewable energy can be approached quite easily, and also produces a relatively large amount of electricity than what we usually believe. Although it is true that the installation of sustainable energy generators can be costly, it is also true that sustainable energy can be much more effiecient and even economic than fossil fuels in the long term.

1. A computer screen showing the control system of the generator

2. Graph of electricity generation and use

BLUE-GENERATION    RED-USAGE

3. The location of the solar panels in our school