At the beginning of the school year, our club historian, Ramon, had the idea of bringing solar energy to our school. Our vice-president, Jennifer, found that PG&E offered grants for schools willing to begin such projects, and, to our surprise, we got it.
None of us are experts on starting things like solar energy projects, but we’ve been working since December trying to get any help possible. We’ve contacted local colleges, other high schools, and many, many solar installers and suppliers, but we’ve been ignored by most. We’ve even gone to the limits of contacting PBS’s Design Squad Nation to see if they had any advice to offer.
Including them, only three of the organizations and companies responded. We made this video to show how difficult it is, even for us in a region surrounded by so much clean energy development, to get clean energy projects started in high schools.
This film was shown at the KQED Science Youth Media Festival in 2012.