Thorlux supports the Education Development Trust

Thorlux supports the Education Development Trust through two main initiatives, the Engineering Education Scheme which links teams of four Year 12 pupils and their teacher with local companies to work on real, scientific, engineering and technological problems, and Go4Set which links teams of six Year 8/9 pupils with companies and universities to offer a 10 week science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) experience.

For a number of years Thorlux has supported the Engineering Education Scheme by hosting a team of lower sixth form pupils who embark on an engineering project set and mentored by Thorlux. During their six-month project phase, students are encouraged to show industrial enterprise, creativity and innovation whilst gaining extensive experience of problem-solving, team-working and project management. The Scheme improves industrial and higher education links and can provide early access to high ability, potential graduate recruits.

This year the Go4SET scheme involved Thorlux Lighting working for 10 weeks with 6 Year 9 students from St Augustine’s Catholic High School, Redditch, to investigate how energy could be saved within their school. The students identified the gym as an area where controlled lighting could be installed. The gym is used regularly for both exams and sport, but has periods of the day with no occupancy and is currently fitted with 400W mercury vapour luminaires. It was decided that Smart SolowLED fittings were the most suitable replacement, and would offer energy savings of up to 78%. The savings seen could be replicated in other areas of the school, with substantial potential energy and carbon savings.
The students visited Thorlux Lighting to see how engineering is delivered in the workplace, and to see the processes utilised in making their working scale model of the school gym and its new lighting system. They also had the opportunity to populate their own LED boards and then test them to see whether they worked. These were used in the model, which will be shown at the Celebration and Assessment Day at the Ricoh Arena in Coventry on June 24th, as part of the Big Bang show.

For further information visit etrust.