The Youth Energy Summit (YES!) empowers youth to partner with their community to create economic and environmental vitality through hands-on learning and team-based projects.
CERTs has supported teams throughout the years with seed grants and technical assistance, and recently West Central Regional Coordinator Erin Smith and statewide Co-Director Joel Haskard met with school teams at their event at the Prairie Woods Environmental Learning Center.
At the event Joel and Erin caught up with me (Royalton High School sophomore Brandi Kloss—I’m in the middle on the photo above) so I could share a little bit about our YES! team and our projects. Below is the interview!
CERTs: What did your team do last year?
Brandi Kloss: One of our projects was Royalton designed and built a super mileage car – winning the Minnesota Technology Education and Engineering Educators Association Supermileage competition in the Electric division.
CERTs: Tell us a little more about the competition and your car?
Brandi Kloss: The main point of the competition is to design a car to use the least amount of electricity (in our case). Our car has a fiberglass body that was molded by students at the Royalton High School. The frame is aluminum tubing. It was welded and designed completely by students. On the car we have a 180 degree view camera that allows the driver to see behind them.
CERTs: What were some of the highlights and challenges of this project?
Brandi Kloss: Our challenges were being able to get a fully functioning vehicle on the track. We also had issues with our brakes failing in the middle of inspection so we had to come up with a way to fix this quickly. Our highlights were every time we did another lap we set the bar higher. We also got closer as a group.
CERTs: What is your team working on now?
Brandi Kloss: Our team is now working on the very long process of creating our solar trailer. We want to demonstrate what can be done with alternative energy.
The Royalton YES! Team was also one of the exhibitors at the CERTs 2015 Conference, where they showcased their super mileage car and their solar-powered trailer. See the images below!
With the super mileage car:
Tabling at the CERTs Conference:
In front of the solar trailer:
You can also see a great presentation by the Royalton students at a Central CERT renewable energy tour last year. To learn more about YES! visit www.youthenergysummit.org
