Mike Penning joins local schools in celebrating Global Wind Day at RES
29th June 2012
Mike Penning, Member of Parliament for Hemel Hempstead, joined local school children and sixth formers to celebrate Global Wind Day at RES Headquarters in Kings Langley. (Photos Mark Somerville)
Leading renewable energy company RES hosted a group of 6 and 7-year olds who undertook a range of activities based on the renewable energy theme.
Mike also presented RES Young Engineering Excellence Awards to JFK sixth-form students. The students were nominated by Jack Noakes, Chief Engineer at RES, in recognition of the outstanding achievements by the students during an engineering challenge as part of the national Engineering Education Scheme.
Jack Noakes, RES Chief Engineer, said:
“The challenge we set the students meant they had to learn fast and operate at a particularly high level for their age. Their planning and execution of the challenge was truly excellent.”
The Engineering Education Scheme facilitates industry-mentoring of student teams of 16/17 year olds to participate in a genuine engineering project set by their sponsoring company.
This year's project related to the research and development of a Floating version of the LiDAR System - a meteorological device that uses lasers to take wind measurements. Mounting such a system on a buoy deployed at sea could potentially achieve substantial reductions in project costs.
The student project required them to design and build a prototype ‘motion compensation system,’ capable of reducing the pitch and roll to which the LiDAR would be exposed to in this context. The students’ Maths teacher Justin James provided them with vital encouragement throughout the challenging project.
Mike Penning said:
“I congratulate the students on their achievement and RES and JFK for working together to give the students such valuable engineering experience. I was incredibly impressed with the quality of the work and encourage other companies to get involved with the Engineering Education Scheme.
“RES does great work with local schools and the primary school children I met on my visit had a great day as well!”
