A Kwun Tong secondary school this week showed off the mini wind turbines installed on its rooftop as part of a campaign to persuade other schools to go green.
The Hong Kong Taoist Association Ching Chung Secondary School demonstrated two panels of mini turbines, installed on its seventh-floor rooftop since June last year, to 50 educators from other schools.
The turbines were developed by Hong Kong-based French inventor Lucien Gambarota in 2006 in conjunction with two engineering academics from the University of Hong Kong.
The system has been installed in more than 10 commercial buildings across the city. Compared with big conventional turbines, the mini turbines can generate electricity at lower wind speeds - as low as 2 metres per second.
Principal Benjamin Ng Yau-keung said the turbines, costing HK$10,000 to install, could save about 1 per cent of the school's power consumption. But the benefit was educational rather than economic.
'It can make our teaching on environmental protection more lively. Our teachers use the system as an example of green energy in their science and geography lessons to explain how people develop and apply new environment-friendly energy,' Mr Ng said.
