Grant County PUD, REC Silicon look for future workers

MOSES LAKE - The sunny Tuesday afternoon was perfect weather for North Elementary School students to get their cars to go.

For the second year, the Grant County Public Utilities District and REC Silicon co-sponsored solar car races for fifth graders at North and other area elementary schools.

"This is an experience for the kids in alternative energy, in this case, solar," Grant County Public Utilities District Energy Services Specialist Jim Frank said.

A week before they let their cars loose, Frank provided the kits to put the cars together and helped the students build them.

"They've been fine-tuning and working with them since then," Frank explained. "Now we're going to let them race them and we time them to the 100th of a second, rather than just one kid against the other."

Medals were passed out to the first, second and third runners-up, while the owner of the fastest car in the school got a professional model car.

REC Silicon paid for the program, purchasing the cars and furnishing manpower to help run the races.

This is the second year for the program, Frank said.

After the races, Frank gives a presentation about using solar power to run the cars through a solar panel.

"So they realize they kind of built a solar battery, if you will," he explained. "It runs on sunlight and powers their car, and has a little DC motor on it. They choose between gear ratios … and then they experiment with different ways of putting these things on to get the most solar power. There's a lot of variables, of course, in what makes the car go faster."

About 70 students ran their cars along a track designed and built by PUD Maintenance Serviceman RJ Fronsman at North Elementary School.

Frank said he hopes to present the information as new technology so that the students may in the future want to become an engineer or carry things farther to make solar power cost-effective for use in everyday life.

"That day is coming," Frank said. "One of them may be the engineer that will help us do that."

"It's giving back to the community," REC Silicon Customer Service Representative for the Sales and Marketing Department Katrina Seibel explained. "It's kind of introducing what we do and the product we provide to the solar industry. Maybe there's an interest in some of the children, and we can always use an engineer."

REC finance manager Kevin Smith said many more educational programs are centering around alternative and renewable energies.

"Even the workforce, many colleges and universities are setting up programs for green energies and they are starting to talk with companies such as REC Silicon regarding those," Smith said. "And so this all kind of links to further stages of education and programs that are out there."

Seibel estimated several hundred car kits were put together. Frank said there were close to 700 this year.

North Elementary School fifth-grade teacher Rita Carson said there was a lesson about solar and other energy investigations.

"The kids had a great time putting the cars together, we had all 70 some kids out there around tables following directions and so most of them did it all by themselves, then they tinkered and tweaked with it a little bit," Carson said. "Mr. Frank is really good about giving very precise instructions so the kids can follow them easily, and the adults can follow them easily."

The students look forward to the event each year, Carson said.

"This is one thing fifth-graders get to do," she said.

"It's pretty cool," North Elementary School fifth-grader Esteven Garcia said. "The fact that you get to make something that's powered by sun, and nothing else. I thought it was going to be pretty hard, but it turned out to be pretty easy. I used to think (solar energy) couldn't do that much, but I learned it can do a lot."