Their athletic teams are known for wearing navy blue and silver, but for some Carroll County High School students in the Building Trades classes, a dash of green might not look out of place.

Before school ended last month, many of the Building Trades students were working on harnessing different forms of alternative energy to help in their schoolwork. In a collaborative effort with the electronics department, the students built a solar panel to use as an energy source, as well as a passive energy unit.

“We’re trying to show them more nontraditional things; what’s coming; getting them thinking environmentally,” said Building Trades instructor Rusty Warren. “I see sustainable energy is on the rise right now and if we can give them a background on what it’s all about as far as home usage and consumption, that’s better preparing them for the construction industry and the future as a whole.”

Warren said to that end, he talked to his students about alternative sources of energy and instructed them in the construction of two working solar panels. The electronics department had a hand in the construction as well.

“We built a complete solar energy electrical system,” Warren said. “We’re producing electricity we can use here in the shop. It’s a small model of what you would have in a home system. I can go through and show them each of the components. I had them build this from the ground up; each photocell was soldered and attached to the panel individually. When you apply this to the home market, you have more cells and more batteries but you have the energy protectors, the inverters, the whole system is there. On a small scale, they can see it and understand it, see how it works and we can talk about it.”

The students also built a passive energy unit and ran air and water through it, and using the solar panel, got the water in the unit up above 200 degrees.

Warren said his students enjoyed exploring alternative energy sources.

“They see something unique and get into putting the project together,” he said. “When I take the class out as a whole and talk about implications, there’s a lot of interest. I hear a lot of comments back, I can tell the students are thinking about it; I hear innovative comments, design modifications that could be made or things that could be incorporated. That spurs that higher-level thinking that’s going to be needed in the future.”

Plus, that line of thinking could prove to be helpful in the years that follow.

“We recognize we are depleting our energy sources and we need to have alternative forms,” Warren said. “At least when we have an energy spike, we’re thinking along that line and seeing what’s coming. Hopefully we’re starting to prepare for it.”