ES student Lucinda Bailey Thompson spent her summer working with the Energy Team at North Yorkshire County Council.
"During this summer, I was selected to run my own solar power project to assess the viability of putting Solar PV panels on corporate buildings. All non-school County Council buildings were assessed using floor plans, maps and the County Council's Corporate Asset Register.
"From all viable sites, I produced an overall financial plan and a financial risk assessment for presentation to the Finance Director. This explained the need to carry out the project before the Feed-In Tariff scheme deadline and the experiences of other Councils, such as Southampton City Council, undertaking similar schemes.
"From this work, three main corporate sites (County Hall, North Yorkshire House and White Rose House) are currently having Solar PV installed and will benefit from the Government's Feed-In-Tariff scheme. The project value is about £500,000. The work that I carried out was included in the main report to the Finance Director and helped to achieve commitment from the management.
"I also helped to input data for their upcoming data reporting deadlines and on other tasks carried out in the day to day running of the team. I analysed the successes of some of their previous projects and assessed how Carbon and cost reductions matched project estimates, producing a report on the success of the energy team since their formation around 2008.
"I very much enjoyed the project, as it expanded my theoretical knowledge from my University work, especially from the renewable energy project undertaken in the first year field trip, and I hope to return to work with the Energy Team sometime in the future."