The Oregon Museum of Science and Industry’s (OMSI) Hancock Field Station recently added a photovoltaic solar panel array that will be used as energy and educational resource to raise student and public awareness about the value of clean, renewable solar power.
It is also expected to offset some of the facility’s energy costs, but for workers, researchers and organizers at Hancock Field, that almost seems to be secondary consideration. Understanding is the real goal.
OMSI, founded in 1944, is one the nation’s top ten science museums. Containing five exhibit halls and eight science labs, the complex offers 219,000-square-feet of interactive exhibits that permit hands-on learning and demonstrations.
Hancock Field Station Hancock Field Station is a natural science field camp established in the 1940s by amateur paleontologist Lon Hancock. It has been managed by OMSI since 1951, and its residential facilities serve as a vantage point from which to study the paleontology, geology, ecology, botany, zoology, archaeology and ornithology of the high desert grasslands and canyons near John Day River. Annually, 3,500 participants attend the Station’s nature camps.
The newest object of study is neither flora nor fauna, and studying it seems far removed from the usual observations of cloud patterns, animal signs and desert ecosystem habitats, but the collection of monocrystalline solar cells, encapsulated in panels and mounted at a slight angle to the earth, offer hope for a future in which all the natural ecosystems can continue to survive – something which seems uncertain if the nation and the world continue to burn through fossil fuels at the current rate.
It took a lot of cooperation to make things happen, but thanks to $9,000 worth of goods and services donations – by such entities as Portland-based solar design-build firm Tanner Creek Energy; solar design and engineering firm Lear Electric Co.; global solar energy firm SolarWorld; Bend-based inverter manufacturer PV Powered; global design and engineering company KPFF Consulting Engineers; and the national non-profit green power/carbon offset pioneer Bonneville Environmental Foundation, or BEF, an offshoot of federally managed (U.S. Department of Energy) Bonneville Power Administration – the solar system is up and running.
Other OMSI solar initiatives include the spring Da Vinci Challenge. This spring, 16 youth and adult teams got together, invented and tested, among other things, a solar-powered tank that shot nothing more lethal than marshmallows, a solar-powered paddle boat, and a pedal-powered orthinopter.
On a more serious note, researchers from Portland State University will be using $600,000 in grants to study the integration of solar panels and eco-roofs to determine how combining these green technologies might improve overall solar energy production.
Data from the experiment will be used to set up a renewable energy exhibit at OMSI in the near future.