At the same time you see graphs that show how much electricity the sun makes, you will also see graphs that display the amount of electricity that is required to run the entire school. The 2,000-watt solar energy system won't power the school by itself. AEP generates the rest of the energy the school needs from coal, nuclear energy, natural gas and hydropower. AEP tries to generate and deliver electricity as wisely as possible, squeezing all the electrons we can from our natural resources, stretching out the supply of fossil fuels, reducing our effect on the environment and saving money so you pay less for electricity.

You're already doing the easy stuff to save electricity, like turning off the lights when you leave the room, but how about when you're using electricity? Are you making those electrons work as hard as you can?

You can make electrons work harder — really make them sweat — by trying to use the same stuff you already do but with less electricity. By being more efficient with electricity, less fossil fuel needs to be burned, so fewer emissions are released into the environment. Take lightbulbs, for example. Everyone needs to light up areas of their house or school to see. But instead of using the same kind of lightbulb everywhere, you can choose the bulb that makes just the right amount of light to read, so you don't over-light your reading area. That's making electrons work hard. If you can use fluorescent bulbs, they are even more efficient than incandescent ones because they produce the same amount of light with less electricity.

At AEP, we've done the same thing. First, we looked at how we lighted our 12 million square feet of building space. Then, using tips from USEPA, we figured out that by changing the bulbs or the fixtures for them in about six million of those square feet, we could save 23 million kilowatt-hours of electricity each year. So, over a five-year period, we did change those bulbs and fixtures. Now, we're saving a lot more than electricity. It takes about a pound of coal to make one kilowatt-hour, so we're saving a lot of coal, too. Also, we reduced our yearly gas emissions of sulfur dioxide by 377 tons, nitrogen oxide by 144 tons and carbon dioxide gases by 29,295 tons. In fact, the USEPA thought AEP did a pretty good job of living up to our Green Lights Program pledge to be more efficient and help our customers do the same, so it gave us the Utility Ally of the Year Award.

Another way you can make electrons sweat is to use geothermal energy to heat and cool your house. Water in the ground is warm, and it has energy in it that can be taken out with a heat pump. The U.S. EPA says that using a geothermal pump is the most efficient way to heat and cool your house. AEP is helping customers learn about geothermal systems so they can use more of them.

AEP has been burning coal for a long time and has learned how to get the most electricity it can from its power plants. Whenever you convert one form of energy into another, you lose some usable energy. As we take the energy out of coal, for example, we lose about 65% of that energy. That means we're about 35% efficient, which is better than the average for all U.S. coal-burning power plants. BUT, we also have figured out how to burn coal even more efficiently -- around 50% more efficiently. It's a really different way that requires a whole new power plant. We tried out this new way in a small, old power plant in Ohio. When we build our big, new plants for this clean coal technology, their designs will be based on what we learned at the experimental plant.

Using electrotechnologies can boost efficiency, save electricity and help the environment. You don't know what electrotechnologies are? Well, they're all around you. One of the first electrotechnologies was the refrigerator. People used to use big blocks of ice in a box (hence the name "icebox"), but the refrigerator quickly became a big hit. Same with vacuum cleaners (people used to hang rugs on a clothesline and whack them to get the dirt out). Your computer is another example of electrotechnology, especially when you send e-mail or a fax instead of mailing a letter. Industry uses electrotechnologies all the time.

When the sun hits the solar panels at Bluffsview and everything is perfect, 85% of the sun's energy is lost because the silica crystal cells are only 15% efficient converting sunlight into electricity. What can make the solar cells less efficient? If it is cloudy, trees or the building shade them, if they have dust or snow on them. Sunlight will reach the solar cells through snow, but not as much. By the way, remember the light bulbs? It's the same with solar cells and bulbs. You need to dust off your bulbs so all the light they make gets into the room.

If the solar cells aren't oriented to receive the sun's rays head on, they won't make as much electricity. BP Solar used a computer to find out the best orientation by compass direction and tilt angle to the sun. The best compass angle is true south. It turns out that you could make a big mistake and line up the cells way off true south and the solar cells would still be pretty efficient.

But If you didn't have the tilt angle just right, the cells wouldn't make nearly the electricity they could.

What's so important about the tilt? It's because the sun is higher in the sky in the summer and lower in the winter. At the Bluffsview School, that's a 40 degree range, which is a lot. If Bluffsview kids wanted to really make the electrons in the solar cells work hard, they'd change the tilt angle every month, according to BP Solar's computer results.

If no one wanted to change the tilt, BP Solar says the tilt can be 40 degrees all the time for average efficiency. The 40 degree tilt is the same as the latitude for the school. You can see why BP Solar gave the best angles for the Bluffsview Project. The sun's angle is pretty important to know so that the tilt angle of the solar panels can be set for the highest efficiency. You can also figure out the sun's angles for your school or anywhere else using the SUNANGLE program found on http://susdesign.com/sunangle/.

Sometimes by looking at things in a different way, you can do it better.

Yu Kun Pei (or Y.K. for short) was working at Owens-Illinois Inc. in Toledo, Ohio, not far from Bluffsview School, when he was asked to make something that could collect solar energy better than anything else. Y.K. thought that if he could do that, he could help Chinese families heat up water for tea and taking baths instead of cutting down trees and burning them to make hot water. In many places in the People's Republic of China, people don't have natural gas or electricity to make hot water like we do in the United States. But Y.K. lives by the saying, "Do not reach for the sky without your feet planted firmly on the earth." He said, "If we cannot make the collector for the sun's energy affordable and safe, then it doesn't really matter how good it is." He knew that if people didn't have enough money to buy his invention, they'd keep using firewood.

Y.K. spent some time thinking about this challenge. He knew all about glass since he'd been working with it for about 45 years. He'd studied how the sun's rays were used by collector boxes made of flat plates of glass to capture energy. Instead of converting the sun's rays into electricity like the solar cells at Bluffsview, the boxes used rays to heat air or liquids inside the box. Then the energy in the air or liquid was used to heat water for cooking, washing clothes or bathing, or to heat the air in homes.

Ever entered a car on a hot summer day? You already have an idea of how hot it can get inside the collector box.

Finally, the idea came to him. He decided to roll the flat plate of glass into a tube, put one tube inside another, and paint the insides of the tubes black and silver, to bring as much of the sun's energy inside the tubes and keep it there. He also took out the air between the two tubes and sealed the ends of the tubes to create a vacuum to really lock in the energy. Here's a sketch of his collector tube. (Refer to Diagram 1) The tube is 2 inches in diameter and 44 inches long. Y.K. laid them next to each other pointing south so they could catch direct beams of light from almost any point in the sky as the sun moved overhead. The tubes also catch reflected (diffuse) light from all sides (Refer to Diagram 2) Y.K. put a thermometer inside the hollow tube on a sunny day and discovered he had truly captured the sun in the tube when he measured 575 degrees Fahrenheit!

By putting the tubes end-to-end and plugging the outside ends, he could direct the hot air out of the tubes to heat water in a tube or tank. (Refer to Diagram 3) Now that he had invented tubes that worked, he had to find out if his tubes were better than flat plate collectors. So he compared the two by taking different measurements. First, he measured how much energy could be collected by each and found out that the tubes collected more than the flat plate for a longer time throughout the day (Refer to Diagram 4) "This is good," he said.

Then he measured the efficiency of the tube and the flat plate collectors when it was cold (20 degrees F.) and hot (80 degrees F.) outside and discovered that the tube was more efficient than the flat plate and that the tube worked at the same efficiency whether the temperature was 20 or 80. (Refer to Diagram 5) "This is very good," he said.

Finally, he made temperature measurements as it got warmer and cooler outside and inside the tube and flat plate collectors and monitored solar radiation as it changed throughout the day. He calculated the percent efficiency of the collectors and found that his tube was more efficient than the flat plate all day. (Refer to Diagram 6) "This is GREAT!" he said.

Remembering to keep his feet firmly on the ground, he started CONSOL Energy Co. and is making many of tubes at a time to keep the cost of each tube low so everyone will be able to buy them. Oh, yes, even though they are made of glass, they don't break very easily so they are safe.

Want to ask Y.K. questions about his sun capturing tubes?

You can send an e-mail to Y.K. in China in care of his son, Gee Pei, at: gpei@netvigator.com.

Y.K. and his son will be happy to hear from you.

Still another way to make electrons sweat is to use something called a fuel cell to change the energy in hydrogen into electricity. Fuel cells can be very efficient at making electricity, and researchers are looking for ways to make the electrons from them sweat even more. To learn more about fuel cells, check out 'Fuel cells – another way to generate electricity.'