It was a gift from the Sacramento Municipal Utility District to Palmiter junior-senior high school in Arden Arcade.
The sunflower is in the school courtyard. It looks like a sunflower with six solar panels on top of an 18-foot-tall stem.
The school stresses hands-on learning. Brent Sloan with SMUD gave a demonstration to about a dozen students. Jase Elias wanted to know how the condition of the solar panels affects performance, "What's the difference between a clean one, a dirty one, and a scratched-up one?" he asked. Sloan said, "Actually that would be a neat experiment to run here, but I'll cheat and tell you that a really dirty panel over the course could limit you by about eight-percent"
The sunflower is the third donated by SMUD to Sacramento-area schools. The fourth will be unveiled Tuesday in Elk Grove.
