Nine secondary schools in South West Trinidad presented the future of energy technology at a special exhibition hosted recently by Atlantic at Paria Suites, La Romaine. The occasion was the presentation ceremony for the Atlantic organised and sponsored competition, Alternative Energy in Today’s Environment. Fyzabad Secondary, Holy Name Convent Secondary, Iere High, Palo Seco Secondary, Parvati Girls’ Hindu, Penal Secondary, Shiva Boy’s Hindu, Siparia East Secondary and Vessigny Secondary School submitted technical papers, describing their suggested alternative sources, and were invited to develop working models to be presented to the judging panel.
Henley Harewood, Atlantic’s director of Health, Safety and the Environment (HSE) explained that the competition was designed to raise students’ awareness of the different forms of alternative energy apart from fossil, available in the environment. By learning about the different applications of these energy forms in science, industry and technology, T&T’s students would join the global search for alternative clean and sustainable forms of energy. Harewood made reference to the consequences of deforestation on Easter Island and on the greater issue of global warming, an example, the extreme dry and wet season experienced by T&T and the region this year.
Maurice Massiah, Atlantic’s Engineering Authority/Process Engineering manager and chief judge of the competition, expressed how impressed the judges were with the level of creativity and effort that the students had put into the practical aspect of the competition, where they designed, built and presented working models of alternative energy being used to power various devices. Parvati Girls’ Hindu College captured the first prize, for their project entitled D Gasbage Bin, which used recycled garbage to generate gas to be used as fuel. The students representing Penal Secondary School’s rapped and danced their way to second place and the prize for best presentation with their wind power project, Word! While Holy Name Convent Secondary School placed third with their proposal to use the pitch lake as a source of geothermal energy
