This is the third in a series of articles about USD 257?s Career and Technical Education program.
Iola High School senior Casen Barker picked through an assortment of wires of varying lengths. Green, red, yellow.
Choosing a long red wire. Barker studied the connectors on each end to determine how to hook them into a circuit.
?What Casen is hooking up now is a limit switch,? Dan Cyre, instructor with the Regional Rural Technology Center?s wind energy program, explained. ?It certainly is essential. Should Casen go on to become a wind technician, he?ll run into limit switches again.?
The switch uses 24 volts of DC current, but the machine Barker was using runs on 208 volts of AC. The first thing Barker needed to figure out was how to convert from AC to DC power.
?Usually on these labs, if something?s not going right then the first thing I do is check the wiring. Check the circuits,? Cyre advised.
After a few minutes of trial and error, plugging and unplugging different wires, Barker double-checked his configuration and flipped a switch. Lights popped on, first red then green.
He had passed the assignment.
The wind energy class uses training modules to teach students about concepts like electricity and hydraulics. The modules mimic the types of equipment found in a wind turbine or substation. Some of the modules were loaned to the RRTC this year by Cloud County Community College, in order to bring the wind energy technology class to Allen County.
The class began this fall, the culmination of multiple years of effort and hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants and donations.
There aren?t many wind technician training schools in the country ? and nearly all of those are college-level programs. The RRTC program is believed to be a very rare opportunity for high school students to earn certification as a wind technician.
Wind energy is an emerging industry. Technicians are in high demand and can earn very competitive salaries.
Indeed, wind technicians are in demand in southeast Kansas. Construction of the Prairie Queen Wind Farm was completed earlier this year; wind farms are currently under construction in Redding and Neosho County.
Students who complete the course at RRTC will earn a 16-hour certificate that will allow them to apply for jobs at a wind farm. They also can continue their education. Cloud County offers a one-year certificate and a two-year associate degree, with opportunities to add certificates in specialized areas like substations, solar, blade repair or drones.
A student who earns an associate degree will earn more money in their first year of work than the instructors who taught them, Cyre said.
?The hope is that these students can get jobs at some of the wind farms under construction in this area, and stay close to home to raise their families,? he said.
Of course, money isn?t everything.
Some students want careers in wind energy to make a positive impact on the environment, Cyre said.
