Solar City Senior Field Consultant Jack Levenson, right, explains the advantages of solar energy to Huntingtown High School students.

Huntingtown, MD – As the energy debate rages on, students living in a battleground county have been studying the alternatives. Calvert County is home to a nuclear power and liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants. A plant that generates power from coal and oil looms across the Patuxent River in south Prince George’s County. As more local homeowners have solar panels installed on their homes and the local school system incorporates geothermal technology at some of its newer schools, gasping the pros and cons of each option was the charge one local science teacher gave to her students.

On Wednesday, Feb. 11, Jamie Rowder’s advanced placement (AP) environmental science students presented a symposium at Huntingtown High School (HHS). 

Rowder’s freshmen academic science students attended the symposium in shifts, each visiting various stations where the AP students and guest presenters explained the advantages and disadvantages of alternative energies—energy that does not come from fossil fuels.

One guest presenter, Tom Dennison of Southern Maryland Electric Cooperative (SMECO) explained that while some alternative energy sources provide the electricity the co-op purchases and distributes to its customers, the percentage of power generated by wind and solar is very negligible.

The co-op has what Dennison described as a “balanced portfolio” of sources—coal (44 percent), nuclear (35 percent) and natural gas (16.4 percent). Regarding wind and solar power, Dennison stated “it’s part of the picture.”

When asked by one student what the downside to solar power was, SMECO’s Environmental Programs and Energy Conservation Manager Jeff Shaw explained both solar and wind’s “intermittence” make it unworkable as a source of base-load power. Additionally, of solar, “it can’t be used everywhere. It doesn’t happen all the time.”

Still solar power use is expanding commercially and domestically. Solar City Senior Field Consultant Jack Levenson said his company services approximately 22,000 customers a month nationwide. “In March and April we will be installing panels on rooftops,” said Levenson. The object is not to get customers “off the grid,” which Levenson stated “wouldn’t even be a good idea,” but to make alternative energy available to them. “Their roof is becoming a generator,” said Levenson.

Senior AP science student McKenzie Turpin explained the pros and cons of nuclear energy. On the plus side, nuclear “is really efficient” as it provides gigawatt power than any other source. It also emits no greenhouse gases. On the negative side, nuclear plants are expensive to build and they produce contaminated waste that must be stored in metal casks for hundreds of years since there is no way to safely dispose of it.

Students Allie Switzer and Hannah Dillon did presentations on wind energy and hydrogen energy.  Switzer and Dillon pointed out wind energy “creates cleaner air that other alternative energy sources, does not harm environment like mining and transportation, and the wind turbine ‘footprints’ only cover a small space of land, having minimal impact on crops.” On the downside, “turbines only produce energy when wind blows, create a great deal of noise and the construction process is troublesome.”

Additionally, the presenters pointed out the large turbines can cause harm to animals, especially birds.

While hydrogen energy has both economic and environmental benefits (i.e. cost effective and efficient) it has no political support and is highly flammable.

Rowder said this was the first year she has held the energy symposium at HHS. Her students, she added, are extremely enthusiastic about the environment and the impacts energy sources have on it. The teachers expressed disappointment that Dominion Resources, the owners and operators of Cove Point LNG Plant in Lusby, declined her invitation to participate as a presenter at the event.

Contact Marty Madden at marty.madden@thebaynet.com