St. Andrew Technical High School to Open Renewable Energy Lab in September

Work to procure a new renewable energy laboratory at St. Andrew Technical High School (STATHS) is now in motion, with construction set to take place during the summer holiday and the facility expected to be commissioned in September.

The announcement came from Minister of Education, Skills, Youth and Information, Senator Dr. the Hon. Dana Morris Dixon, who outlined the practical training students would receive in the new space.

“Students will learn about solar technology. They’ll learn about solar installation. They will learn about the batteries. They’ll learn about wind power too. Using that lab, they will learn how to instal solar systems, how to monitor them, how to fix them and even look at other systems too, because it could be wind-based or other types of renewable energy solutions,” Dr. Morris Dixon said.

She was speaking on Tuesday, April 14, during an alumni engagement visit marking the school’s 65th anniversary, held under the theme “Inspiring Change: Reshape, Realign, Refocus.” The Minister also walked through the school’s Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) facilities while on the compound.

As part of the day’s programme, Grade-11 students Nathaniel Hurge and Cameron Pinnock presented STATHS Autopeck, an automated chicken feeder they built alongside two classmates.

“Teachers are not able to monitor or find monitoring the chick-feeding process overnight a hassle. So, we came up with a design, an automated chicken feeder to tackle this problem,” Nathaniel said.

He described the unit as being driven by two reduction motors, with three 3D-printed spiral screws arranged clockwise, anticlockwise and in the middle to guide the feed downward into the basins.

“This device also comes with a timer module which you can set for how long you want it to feed and the time intervals in which the machine runs for,” the 16-year-old explained.

A weighted sensor has also been built into the feeder to guard against overfeeding. According to Nathaniel, if the chicks are eating slowly and feed begins to accumulate, the machine reads the weight in the basin and powers itself off automatically.

“This device is not the first of its kind. This is just our specific design, and for future innovations we plan to programme an app to this device so that you can monitor it from anywhere,” he added.

Cameron noted that the build pulled together skills from several industrial areas, including electrical engineering, building construction, plumbing and visual arts. He said the team put the feeder together in two weeks, using parts such as reduction motors, a DC outlet, a five-gallon bottle, pipes and a switch.

“It was a task but we got through… . Our next plan is to add a solar system to this so that it doesn’t have to use electrical energy all the time,” Cameron said.