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Students in El Paso, Texas, Create Renewable Energy Building

The small shed-style building is a free-standing, off-grid building that, when completed, will feature solar panels, a wind turbine and water wheel.

(TNS) -- Students at North Star Elementary School in El Paso, Texas, are getting first-hand experience on creating an Educational Renewable Energy Structure this summer.

About 120 students in the second through fifth grades are participating in the project. Half of the students helped with research and half are doing the heavy lifting and building.

The small shed-style building is about 100 yards from the school. It is a free-standing, off-grid building that, when completed, will feature solar panels, a wind turbine and water wheel.

It also will have touch-screen panels so students can see how the energy is produced in real time.

Students were able to choose one of three areas to work on: engineering, woodshop and technology.

The build started at the beginning of June and as in the "real world" there were construction delays, officials said.

Ismael Lara, Ysleta Independent School District grants site coordinator, said the first delay came with building the floor.

"We couldn't get the concrete slab donated, so we had to improvise and come up with an alternative," Lara said.

The alternative meant building the floor themselves, including digging and mixing the cement for the slab.

Nicole Sinyard, 10, was among the students that helped build the floor.

"I had never done that before," Sinyard said. "It was fun but hard."

She chose to be on both the engineering and woodshop teams. She also helped build the wind turbine and solar panels, she said.

Her fellow engineering teammate David Newman also helped build the wind turbine, as well as the building itself.

"I expected it to be faster," 11-year-old Newman said of constructing the project.

Aside from setbacks with materials, Lara said there also were weather delays.

"Torrential rains messed with our plans and warped some of the wood," Lara said.

The heat has been a challenge, too, and making sure the students were hydrated during the summer project was a priority.

Lara said they hoped to have the project finished within six weeks, but with the delays, it will now likely be finished once the new school year resumes Aug. 24.

The project was part of the Texas After school Centers on Education, or ACE, funded summer program.

The North Star project received about $6,000.

ACE is a grant program administered by the Texas Education Agency funded by the U.S. Department of Education's 21st Century Community Learning Centers program.

About a dozen Ysleta ISD schools are participating in ACE programs, but North Star students are the only ones building a renewable energy structure, Lara said.

©2015 the El Paso Times (El Paso, Texas. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.