Posts Tagged ‘future’

Applied to Durham Tech’s Solar Technology Course

It took me a while, but yesterday I went to Durham Tech’s Orange County campus and completed my application for the Solar Technology course.  The two people I spoke with were enormously helpful, and I ended up submitting my application as a visiting student also – to get my foot in the door for the fall semester.  So today, I’ll write about my experiences at the campus, some information about the programs offered, my consideration of the Renewable Energy diploma, and then some thoughts toward the future of solar power.

The Campus

The Orange County campus building is absolutely beautiful.  It was more than I had expected it to be, and I already had high expectations from what I had read on Durham Tech’s website.  Once you turn off Highway 86 onto Waterstone Drive, you’re on a big but otherwise empty road through forested and open parkland until you drive around a gentle curve, and there before you the building emerges up on a hill.  Approach the building from the other direction (Old Highway 86) and you see the very front of the building, decked outside with its triple array of solar panels.

The building is a green building, with lots of natural skylight indoors.  There is also an expansive park-and-ride lot to enable easy public transportation to and from the building.  The parking lots themselves were also expansive compared to the number of cars that were actually there that day; I’m sure there will be more in the future as more students sign up for the Sustainable Technologies program.   Read more…