Renewable energy summer camp teaches Juneau’s next generation about generation

Last Friday, six high school students built a village of model homes at the Alaska Electric Light and Power office. Felix Dean and his cousin Sterling Stark stood next to a small ranch-style house with cardboard walls and small plastic windows.

“This house needs to be as energy efficient as possible,” Dean said. “It has two large windmills that can change according to the direction the wind is coming from.”

In this case, the wind came from a fan that turned the cardboard blades of the turbines. Inside the house, a small blue LED glowed.

“The lighting is controlled by the solar panels we installed on the roof,” says Dean.

The panels really worked. Red and black cables brought real solar and wind energy to the model.

Dean and Stark spent the week building it while learning about renewable electricity at Discovery Southeast’s “Nature of Energy” summer camp.

The weeklong camp was modeled after a similar camp that took place in Sitka last summer, led by Clay Good, energy educator for the Renewable Energy Alaska Project. This year, Good brought it to Juneau.

The camp offered classroom lessons on wind and solar energy and field trips to hydropower sites such as Salmon Creek Dam. Campers also received a tour of diesel generators with AEL&P employees, to see how electricity can be generated using fossil fuels.

“So the students saw the full range,” Good said. “Some of it was getting the kids outside in nature, and some of it was indoors learning about how we use energy in our society.”

To combat man-made climate change, experts say technologies that burn fossil fuels – such as internal combustion engines and gas boilers – need to be replaced with things like electric vehicles and heat pumps, a transition that is known as electrification.

“We’re clearly using more electricity today because we’re using less fossil fuels,” Good says. “So where are we going to get our new electricity when we need more? And so it was kind of the idea to get the next generation to think about the new generation.”

Campers also learned about ways to save electricity with things like energy-efficient appliances or roof gardens – known as green roofs – which can reduce flood risk, clean up air pollution and insulate buildings to reduce energy demand for heating and cooling.

Twelve-year-old Akira Schaefer’s shoebox house had a Lego green roof with colorful plastic fruits and flowers. His mother, Lyndsey Schaefer, said the camp was perfect for her son.

“Because he is very interested in architecture, small houses and nature,” she said. “He learned how we can use what we have here – with the abundance of rain, sun and Taku winds – to power our homes. That is the future: sustainability.”