Solar Panel Used to Blend Smoothies at UWM Event

Students were coming in and out of the UW-Milwaukee’s Union Ballroom with a smoothie in their hands that the UWM Solar Ambassador Team made with their blenders that were powered by a solar panel.

Luke Guillien, who is part of the Solar Ambassador Team, was blending the smoothies using the solar panel. The solar panel was faced towards the window, where the sunlight reflects onto the panel, then generates the blender to make the smoothies.

There were two types of smoothies that were being made, strawberry and banana smoothie and a mixed berry smoothie. The smoothies were blended on sight where students are able to see that the solar panel is generating the blenders. Guillien was operating the blenders and making the smoothies, he would ask students what type of smoothie they would like and would also give a bit of background information about what Solar Ambassadors is and how they created the solar panel.

“60 hertz is used to power the blender,” Guillen said.

The University of Wisconsin Milwaukee has a Solar Ambassador Team also known as RE-volv Solar Ambassadors; where they focus on educating their campus about solar energy, how to eliminate carbon emission and more. It is a nonprofit organization where their main goal is to educate the people and community about conserving energy and eventually having the campus go solar.

The Solar Ambassador Team built its solar panel in one weekend and finished building it on Tuesday morning on the day of the event.   They ordered the materials beforehand and started to build over the weekend. In just one weekend they put in 15 to 20 hours into their solar panel.

It was their first time using a solar energy to use to blend smoothies, Guillien mentioned. They are planning on projects that involve solar panels to be put into parts of UWM campus.

The solar smoothie event was part of this year’s Geek Week. Geek Week is an organization that took place on March fifth to the ninth where multiple events take place for students and faculty to enjoy. This is the fifth year that Geek Week has been at UWM. It all started when a senior administrator heard about Geek Week in a conference meeting and then encouraged the student involvement to bring it into the UWM campus.

“Geek Week has grown each year we’ve had it on campus,” McCain said, “and has become not just a way to highlight our STEM departments and organizations, but to celebrate unique student interests.”

Kristal McCain is the Student Services Coordinator at UWM. She is in charge of calling different departments in UWM asking them if they are interested to participate in Geek Week. If a department is interested, she then makes sure to add them to a calendar and making sure that will get a big enough crowd. This was the first year that McCain tracked student attendance and this year alone, over 1,500 students attended Geek Week events. But, for the solar smoothie event, about 111 students attended.

“Second year that Solar Ambassador has been part of Geek Week, McCain said, “last year they created their own cell phone solar charger.”