The Outreach Center is an educational learning experience designed to introduce sustainable
initiatives including a geothermal heating and cooling system, solar thermal panels,
solar photovoltaic panels, wind turbine, biomass electrical generator, and water reclamation
ponds. Students experience an introduction to sustainable practices, LEED program,
and view firsthand the functional concepts of these efforts.  Visitors will venture
into a nonconventional, energy-neutral classroom and delve into the internal workings
of each renewable-energy system.    

This space is air conditioned with a pond-loop geothermal system and utilizes captured
rainwater to irrigate landscape beds and flush the toilet.    

 

 
      

     

 

 

The sustainability center has a heliodon, which is a model to explain passive solar
technologies. A heliodon is a device that simulates the angle at which sunbeams strike
a physical model of a building or landscape.  A heliodon consist of one or more light
sources and a mechanism to support the model and to rotate it through one to three
axes.  Since the three variables of latitude, time of year, and time of day determine
sun angles, a heliodon must be adjustable for all three factors. 

 

Why Heliodons?

Energy consumption is the primary cause of climate change, and buildings use about
50% of all the energy consumed in the United States. Thus, buildings are the main
cause of climate change, and they use energy primarily for heating, cooling, and lighting
all of which are all greatly impacted by the sun.  Solar responsive design can significantly
reduce this energy demand by harvesting the winter sun for heating, by rejecting the
summer sun to reduce the cooling load, and by collecting a small amount of quality
daylight year-round to replace most of the electric lighting used during daylight
hours.

Successful solar responsive design requires a thorough understanding of solar geometry
and its impact on design.  Heliodons can teach developers, builders, and architects
the basic concepts that will allow them to design low-energy solar-responsive buildings
and communities. Heliodons can also convince potential owners to request solar responsive
design and then see the validity of a particular design. They are powerful tools for
demonstrating the potential and logic of solar responsive design to people of any
age or education level. 

For more information visit http://www.heliodons.org/

 

We invite you to tour our Sustainability Center at Southeastern Louisiana University 

              

Southeastern’s Environmental Education Development (SEED) classroom is powered by
solar photo-voltaic panels, heated and cooled by a geothermal system, has an operational

power-generating wind turbine, and solar thermal.  The SEED classroom currently has
a biomass pellet process being developed in partnership with Computer Science and
Technology.

We invite you to contact us today to plan a visit to the Southeastern Louisiana University
Sustainability Center, located at 2101 North Oak Street, for a day of fun and learning.
 Email us at [email protected] or call 985-549-5034 to schedule a visit.  We’ll see you there.