It has been very important to inform local authorities of the Ursynow District about the project and its progress. In March 2003 the Mayor of the Ursynow District was officially informed about the project. He agreed to become a patron of the project and assist with planning approval etc.

In May the school was visited by the DEFRA representative to become familiar with the school, to understand the technical details of the project, to discuss the schedule and plans for realisation.

In June all parties of the project agreed the basic system concept and instrumentation needs and by July the plans were fully formulated. The final plan and designs of the solar system installation were approved by the Architecture, Construction and Planning Department of the local authority in July 2003.

After reviewing solar monitoring systems, equipement, tools and software available on the British and Polish market it was decided that Polish products would be used, thereby making the system easier to install and maintain (in its country of origin). It is also most important that the software is in Polish, which helps dissemination of the operating results. At the beginning of the project APAREL, a mechanical & electrical engineering company with experience in solar energy, served as a technical consultant to the project. Later another Polish company HEWALEX was also involved in the project, because of its very good experience in monitoring and visualisation of solar systems.

Partners agreed that HEWALEX would carry out the basic assembly of the solar system to the agreed design and provide the upgrading of the system. The upgrading of the system was concerned with introducing a second collector with its appropriate additional equipement . According to the initial plans presented in the proposal applied to DEFRA in 2002, this upgrading was planned to take place after completion of the project. However, during the construction of the solar system it turned out to be much better, for technical and economical reasons, to construct the full (upgraded) system with two solar collectors, at the same time.

HEWALEX is responsible for the maintenance of the solar system, including its monitoring equipement and visualisation system. Professional maintenance should avoid any technical problems during the system operation and ensure a long life for the system and its use in teaching renewable energy. HEWALEX also agreed to be responsible for the maintaince of the system (including electronics, control, instrumentation etc.) after completion of the project, for the first 3 years of operation.

In June, the partners of the project decided to equip the solar lab with 10 educational PV sets and not to install the PV on the roof (as per the original plan). The decision was made partly because of the complicated and expensive monitoring and visualisation system needed for PV but also because it enabled a much more direct ‘hands-on’ experience for the pupils.

In July the shipment of the solar equipment: the Suntube DP6-2800 solar collector and 10 PV educational kits took place. Installation of the main part of the water heating system was completed in August and the rest of the system together with the monitoring system in December. The visualisation system was installed between December 2003 and February 2004.

Now the "mini solar laboratory" is fully constructed and equipped with its measuring and monitoring system. The laboratory consists of two parts: an open — air laboratory on the roof and an indoor laboratory — inside the school building. On the roof there is a solar thermal system for providing hot water. Two types of solar collectors have been installed, a typical flat plate solar collector produced in Poland (by Hewalex) and vacuum solar collectors (sourced by Riomay). The two types of solar collectors installed on the school roof are shown in Fig. 2.

An antifreeze mixture circulates round the two closed loops of the solar collectors. Both solar collector systems have been linked to

one storage tank, one DHW system and a space heating system. A storage tank, a DHW system that supplies hot water only to the mini solar lab and a mini space heating system in a form of one radiator are located in the room of the solar Lab.

Having lessons in the solar lab pupils have the opportunity to see all of these elements and to watch the operating parameters of the system.

The complete system is connected to a computer and data logger for monitoring and experiments. The instrumentation is both ‘student-friendly’ and very professional. The solar systems have monitoring equipment linked to a PC which enables the pupils to measure chosen parameters, performance and efficiency and to change some of these parameters, therby influancing the operation of the system.

A very important issue for the pupils research work is to be able to influence the solar system operation. This influence is made not only through changes in the basic system parameters like the flow rate of the antifreeze mixture circulating through the solar loops, but also by changes of other parameters like the orientation and inclination of solar collectors. These parameters influance the amount of incident solar radiation on the solar collectors and in consequence on the available solar energy that is converted into heat and is used to warm up the hot water in the storage tank. The collector support construction is equiped with a mechanism that alows the orientation and inclination of the solar collectors to be changed through the automatic controll system which is managed
and controlled by the computer software. Pupils can change the orientation and inclination of solar collectors and learn about influence of these two parameters on the available solar energy. Because the solar system is equiped with two different solar collectors (flat plate and vacum collectors) it is possible to contrast and compare them simultaneously. The parameters of these two collectors, especially the temperature of the circulating fluids and their flows, the amount of useful solar energy gains and their efficiency can all be measured. Pupils can carry out a variety of different experiments, learning about the idea of a stochastic source of heat — solar radiation together with its proper utilisation.

In the last phase of the project: December 2003 — February 2004 the educational materials have been prepared by Polish and English partners and issued. There are teaching materials in the form of a booklet in the Polish language [3], leaflets in Polish, a poster and a Power Point presentation in English, which explain the principles of Solar Energy and other Renewables, the technology used, and the relevance to Poland.

The two PowerPoint presentations are on Solar Thermal and PV respectively. The Solar Thermal presentation first explains the need to use renewables and then explains the way the Sun moves in the sky and how it affects the available energy arriving at a collector. It then describes the construction of flat-plate and evacuated collectors and how their performance may be described by the HWB equation. A range of different solar projects, from single houses to power towers are pictured, and finally a small science project to build a solar cooker is suggested.

The PV presentation goes through the basic science and construction of PV’s describing some of the different types and their performance characteristics. There is information on how they are integrated into stand-alone or grid-linked systems, and many photographs of actual applications.

A school teacher who teaches physics and takes care of the Mini Solar Lab is a main person who is responsible for education in solar energy and other renewables at the school.

Conclusion

Now the project is near its end and the official opening ceremony of the Solar Mini Laboratory is scheduled for April 2004. We hope that the lab will teach hundreds of young people about solar energy. During the life of the system, many hundreds of future engineers, scientists and policy makers will have been exposed to a positive and realistic experience of renewable energy and will have the opportunity to learn about solar energy by theory and practice.

The laboratory is a special educational resource useful in teaching science and technology. It is expected that the school will organise presentations for other schools and exhibitions for the general dissemination of knowledge to the public. The laboratory is to be used not only by the school in consideration, but also by other schools which will be invited to have their solar lessons at the laboratory. In the main they will be schools from Warsaw, and especially schools from the area of Ursynow (where the school is located). This is the new district of Warsaw, with 200 000 inhabitants, of whom 60% constitute the younger generation.

The school will disseminate the idea of renewables and the results of the actual operation of a solar system through the school web-site. Under preperation there is a link from the school web-site to the monitoring and visualisation system of the solar instalation. Everybody who visits the school web-site and is interested in solar energy can see how the system operates and what the parameters of the system operation are. After agreement with the target school, Gimnazjum nr 4, other schools can use a special software key to influence the solar system operation. This means that they could have solar lessons without leaving their own school. The visualisation system was designed and implemented in a way that allows monitoring and analysis of the solar system not only by

the school pupils it is provided for but also by anyone interested (after agreement with a school), via a telephone link to the modem of the school PC.

References

1. Mironczuk J. Instalacja kolektorow stonecznych w szkole z basenem. Polska Energetyka Stoneczna. pp. 30-31. Nr 2/2003. PTES-ISES. Wyd. NOVA, Biatystok

2. Pietruszko S. M., Gradzki M. 1-kW PV system grid connected after two years of monitoring. Roceedings of the ISES Solar World Congress 2003, Goteborg, Sweden

3. Chwieduk D. Energia stoneczna. Publikacja edukacyjna dla szkot ponadpodstawowych. Warszawa 2004. Wyd. NOVA

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