This is my second summer with the FREEDM System Center at NCSU participating as an RET (research experience for teachers), learning about energy and electricity.  This placement is great!  If you are interested in learning and getting tons of opportunities to experience energy in your everyday life then you would like this placement.  Over the five weeks of the program, a group of students and teachers perform labs and activities, take field trips and complete a research project working with PhD students at NCSU that involve electrical engineering

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Many of the experiments that are done are actual activities that I have used or adapted for my classroom.  The best part about them is getting to work with the students as they complete the experiments.  It allowed me to see how they are approaching the activities and how to adapt it so it can be more successful in the classroom setting.  I was able to see where they struggled, and what aspects of the activity caused the misunderstanding.

The field trips are probably the best part of the experience.  I have been able to see many things in a short period of time that I normally would have not get a chance to experience.  All of the fieldtrips are real world and relate directly to our energy usage at home.  Just to name a few:  UNC Cogeneration Power Plant, Harris Nuclear Power Plant, NCSU Clean Room, Duke Power Distribution Center, and CIsco.  Again taking these trips with students and getting to sit back and watch their experience, hearing their questions and seeing their reactions was a great insight to how they view energy in the world around them.

The biggest challenge is working the PhD students on the research project.  This year our project was creating system to place a PV system on an average single family home to reduce electrical power consumption during peak time.  I have forgotten how much math was needed and how difficult it is to learn a lot of new material in a short amount of time.  However we created a great product that can be used by almost anyone to create an estimate on how much it would cost to put a PV array on your home.  It can even be adapted for a classroom project on solar energy.  Here are few photos from the experience: