Home Educators' Days
Bring your child to Tremont for 1 or 2 days of fun and learning in the National Park. Students age 8 and up can join in on programs exploring cultural and natural history with our Teacher Naturalists. Click here for more information.

Tremont Events
Workshops, school, programs, hikes, camping trips and more!
Click here for calendar

Tremont Jobs
A unique opportunity to work inside Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
Check out our jobs page.

Current Road Closures
The park is now distributing road closure information via Twitter. Click here to check closures.

Plans to Improve Tremont
Click here to learn more from Tremont
about the Environmental Assessment
that the park released on improving our facilities.

Tremont eNews
Email us to sign up for our
bi-weekly enewsletter including Tremont and park information and articles
by our naturalists.

Walker Valley Reflections
Ever wonder what it's like to spend a summer at Tremont? Or maybe you already have? Read this edition of Walker Valley Reflections, and you'll get an idea of what it's like to live in the park for a week or so.
View online.


Tremont Workshop Making Solar Energy Attainable


(Great Smoky Mountains) – Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont will be hosting its first free Solar Energy Workshop on Tuesday June 30, 2009 from 10am until noon. Tremont’s staff will be joined by experts in the field of solar energy, representatives from area power companies, and community members who successfully use residential solar power.

This workshop is for anyone who has ever considered going solar, and takes place at Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont, where a solar array was installed in late 2008 thanks to a generous grant from the Alcoa Foundation.

“We want everyone to realize that a solar array is within his or her reach,” says Tremont’s Education Director John DiDiego.

Sheri & Russell Liles of Liles Acres organic produce will discuss their own residential solar setup. Jeff Christian of Oak Ridge National Laboratory Buildings Technology Integration Center will share his experience designing, building and measuring the energy performance of near-zero energy homes, most of which only cost the homeowners $1/day for all their daily grid energy. He will focus his comments on the fact that "Efficiency is Key" to get the most from your solar investment. Gil Melear-Hough of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy, Ed Zubko of Green Earth Services, Ben Dieterle of the National Park Service, and Lucas Harkelroad from Sevier County Electric will also be on hand, as well as representatives from area utility companies, and other energy professionals will also be on hand, as well as representatives from Alcoa and the Tennessee Valley Authority, who will discuss solar energy from all angles. Participants will also get an up-close look at Tremont’s solar array, which feeds power back into the Sevier County grid.

For more information on this free workshop, call (865)448-6709 or e-mail mail@gsmit.org.

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