Introduction

This project is related to one IP course – Climate Mitigation. The ultimate idea of our project is to design and install solar panels for our new campus. As the process of this project, our team changed the goal of this project because of some objective restrictions that influenced this engineering project (i.e. consistent online learning). Now we have finished our project handbook, fundraised 5000RMB for the prototype and got the contract of our prototype from one solar energy company.

In relating to the circumstance of climate change, the world are facing a big problem that everybody will be affected. However, some people and countries ignore or pay not much attention on it because of economic, political and personal factors. For me, I want to contribute to the reduction of carbon emissions as well as raise more awareness through our own efforts. Now the new campus is under construction, and we envisage using solar energy as a power source and achieving carbon neutrality in the new space — that is, offsetting its own carbon dioxide emissions through energy conservation and emission reduction, and achieving “zero carbon emissions”.

During the project, I have experienced three parts. They are a research of climate change, calculating data, designing the prototype. I have developed my critical learning and learning how to learn skills in this project. To finish this project, I utilized much math and engineering knowledge to calculate, analyze and apply the data. At the same time, I worked out with many specialists to narrow down our design, discussing the feasibility of our prototype design and even our final system design. More importantly, our IP course has a platform called Matrix which can document our progress, visualizing my developing skills. Jonathan and Jaguar helped me a lot. I always asked Jaguar for help, especially when I calculated some factors about the solar batteries. And Jonathan helped me with some finance stuff.

Reflection

My growth:

• Critical Thinking. I feel confident about my analysis and interpretation. I made an effective comparison of grid system and battery system in solar generating, and then decided our orientation. I also engaged in problem solving, looking for more probable solutions to push the project. What’s more, I feel more comfortable to my reasoning through doing many estimations.
• Learning how to learn. I feel very delighted that I could see my progress through Matrix. Actually I benefited a lot by using Matrix this skill platform. In advance, I could see all the skills listed in Matrix and noticed something I hadn’t understood or mastered. Besides, I have gone through a bunch of materials that were related to our project and climate change. Some were policies, others were designing standards. Aside from much input, I also initiatively produce the output. Through making plans, as one of leaders in the engineering group, I also led learners to finish the tasks I have assigned to them. We would split these difficult tasks and clarified the key points as well as the biggest challenge of it. Then we would spend much time on making mistakes and resolving problems. More importantly, I gave a lot of constructive feedback. And others commented on me as well. I made much progress through receiving feedback.

I still need to improve:

• I made two big mistakes during this project. The first one is that we finally only got 120m^2 instead of 500m^2 because of my negligence of talking with Gaozhen. This caused that we needed to calculate all the numbers again, delaying our work of the full system design. I need to collect as much information as I can before deciding something. If the information is not complete or incorrect, all the things we have done would be wasted. That is too bad. I should always keep in mind that collecting information effectively and doing more instant communications to clarify the circumstance. The second mistake is that when Samson and I first calculated the energy consumption, the energy we calculated equals to the amount of one hydroelectric power station’s generating capacity. We did not even notice this until Daniel told us! It turns out I need to develop some craftsmanship spirits to be careful persistently.
• I spent too much time deciding whether we were going to use the grid system or the battery system. And I assigned this work to someone who was not suitable. As a leader, I should criticize myself. I will evaluate the task first and reasonably assign the work to the people. Strength management and time management are the skills that I still working on.