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Powerful lessons for Nottingham pupils with E.ON’s wind turbine challenge
Secondary school pupils in Nottingham have taken part in a new renewable energy workshop which challenges them to design and build a fully functioning model wind turbine, before measuring how much electricity their model can generate.
The workshop is provided by E.ON and has been developed with educational specialists to give Key Stage 3 pupils a basic understanding of the mechanics of electricity generation and the potential to use wind as a power source.
Around 120 year 9 pupils from two of the city’s schools, including The Nottingham Emmanuel and School Arnold Hill Academy have now taken the wind turbine challenge and used a portable fan to investigate for themselves how tower height and blade shape affect the power output.
E.ON offers these workshops as part of its commitment to providing the support that schools need and helping educate communities across the country about smarter energy solutions.
Billie-Jean Poole, Senior Community Relations Executive at E.ON, said: “E.ON operates around 1GW of renewable energy in the UK, enough to power more than a million homes, through 16 onshore and 5 offshore wind farms. We realise it’s not often feasible for large numbers of pupils to visit one of these sites, and we’ve developed our wind turbine challenge as a way for them to experiment with wind power without leaving the classroom.
“We’re really pleased that we’ve been able to bring these workshops to Nottingham as part of this year’s tour. We’ve been delivering our educational workshops in Nottingham for a number of years now and have reached thousands of pupils with our energy activities. We hope that through this new workshop we can reach more pupils and can continue to build on the strong relationships we’ve already developed here and increase the support we provide to our local communities.”
Robin Vasey, School Improvement Leader for Science at The Nottingham Emmanuel School, said: “It made me very proud to see our Emmanuel students working so collaboratively and ingeniously, to resolve the problems and issues that this E.ON challenge presented them with.
“The day really enhanced their understanding of what undertaking a career in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths) subjects really required and I have every confidence that these pupils will now go on to achieve more, with even bigger and better opportunities to push the boundaries when they choose to study science further.”
The wind turbine challenge forms part of E.ON’s broader educational activities, developed to help teach children about where energy comes from and how it is used in our everyday lives. E.ON offers a range of educational workshops through its Energise Anything programme, which also includes online parent and classroom-based activities. These support the national curriculum and have been designed to help pupils aged 5-16 understand all stages of energy production, distribution and consumption.
Full details and resources can be found at eonenergy.com/energiseanything