Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 23, Number 4, 1 April 2006 — Going solar [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Going solar

An off-the-grid charter school in rural Puna harnesses the sun's power to run a new computer lab

By Sterling Kini Weng Publicatiūns Editur With an ancient Hawaiian fishing village and a lush native rainforest in its back yard, Kua o ka Lā Charter School's rural loeahon in coastal Puna, on Hawai'i island's east side, provides for some unique educational opportunities. What the off-the-grid campus doesn't provide for, though, is access to electricity. Despite this seemingly major disadvantage, the small Hawaiian culture-based school has actually fared quite well since it started classes in fall 2002. In fact, Kua o ka Lā (literally, "back of the sun") recently won several national and loeal awards for its environmental programs. But with energy being an inescapable issue, school officials turned to the sky for help. With funding from Hawai'i

County and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and technical support from a Hilo company, Photon Power Technology, Ltd., Kua o ka Lā opened a new solar-powered computer lab in February - the first such facility in the state's education system, and just the second in the nation. "We serve as an example of how a school ean successfully operate using alternative energy and be completely sustainable," said Kua o ka Lā principal Susie Osborne. "We're demonstrating that it ean be done." The facility, named the John Hale Learning Center after Kua o ka Lā's late cultural advisor, employs a photovoltaic system to convert sunlight into energy that powers the school's 45 new computers. The solar energy system will also serve as an educational tool for students, who will be responsible for the upkeep of the system. In the process of maintaining it, they will learn the basic science of electricity and the physics of solar energy, Osborne said. The solar energy project aligns with Kua o ka Lā's goal of providing programs that are both culturally driven and support the skills necessary to succeed in today's technological world. Osborne said that the students recently made a presentation on the evolution of energy in Hawai'i, starting off by explaining how Hawaiians

used kukui nuts for candles and then transitioning into a description of how the sun powers their computer lab. Kua o ka Lā has built a reputation for embracing such sustainable and environmentally friendly technologies. It has a strong recycling program and uses commercial-grade eomposting toilets. It's currently exploring converting its two 45-passenger buses to run on biodiesel, a fuel made from vegetable or recycled cooking oil. Osborne said her students have already begun to collect waste oil from area restaurants, and she expects to be using biodiesel by next year. Kua o ka Lā is subject to many of the same problems facing other state charter schools, however, such as laek of state funding and insufficient facilities. In fact, the school's new computer lab also represents its first conventional building. Before the lab was built, the students conducted their indoor activities in several unorthodox facilities, including a traditional Hawaiian grass structure. The only conventional building the students used was at a church located four miles off campus. Despite such problems, Kua o ka Lā is proving that with a little ingenuity, an isolated site between the oeean and a rainforest ean serve as the perfect tool to teach cutting-edge technology. S

HO'ONA'AUAO • EDUCATIŪ N

PMneipal Susie Osborne and others with Kua o ka Lū Charter School (posing with a state DLNR representative) accept the Hawaiian Electric Company's Arbor Day award. Right: Students at Kua o ka Lō learn conducting a science experiment. Photos: Courtesy of Kua o ka La