Every other year (biennially), Oregon publishes an evaluation of energy use in the state, which provides current data on energy use and souces and predicts energy needs for the future.
Read an excerpt of Energy by the Numbers (page 1 below) and Climate Change (page 11 below).
From the "Energy by the Numbers" excerpt above, summarize the main sources of energy currently in use by our state.
From the "Climate Change" excerpt above, what do you notice about the different sectors contributing to Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHG)?
The Oregon Legislature, through the bipartisan Energy Plan Commission, of which you are a part, is writing a 50-year energy plan for the state. The Commission needs to provide a plan with a rationale and a working spreadsheet to show the effects of alternative plans.
Many legislators are unfamiliar with the basic physics of power production, so please include background information to help them better understand the challenges we face. As part of the requirements, the plan must be responsive to the values of Oregonians and fulfill the requirements of the Oregon Law titled “Clean Electricity and Coal Transition Plan” which requires the state to move completely off fossil fuels by 2040.
Additionally, the state requires power companies to produce reliable power that always meets or exceeds the energy needs of all Oregonians while staying within projected growth each decade.
Fill in the orange text using the information from the "Charge to the Energy Plan Commission" to complete your problem statement.
To wrap our heads around this, let’s try out a “wild guess” Initial 50-Year Plan.
Play around with some initial numbers, and paste a screenshot of your "wild guess" below.
You are tasked to write an essay communicating the problem you are trying to solve with the 50 Year Energy Plan and evaluate your design solution against others.
There will be four (4) sections of your essay:
Exploring Our Engineering Challenge (Claim)
Evaluating Competing 50 Year Plans (Evidence)
Reasoning about the Best Design (Reasoning)
Limitations of your Plan
Use the graphic organizer and sentence frames to make sure your Final Recommendation has all the required information.
We are working on the introductory paragraph only right now, Exploring Our Engineering Challenge (Claim).
When you've finished with the first page, paste a screenshot below.
To assist our legislators in their understanding, write a paragraph explaining the basic physics of how electric generators work.
Be sure to include the terms: electromagnet, permanent magnet, current, electrons, voltage, energy, coil, magnetic field, electricity.
To further aid the legislators’ comprehension of this complex topic, describe how our power grid works, using the image as a guide. Include information about how power is produced in large quantities and distributed.
Be sure to include the terms: power plant, high voltage lines, transmission lines, energy, current, transformer, customer.
Using your prioritized criteria and constraints, your new knowledge about energy sources, computational thinking, and one of the templates below, create a final 50-Year Energy Plan and then copy and paste it in.
Template A) 50-Year Energy Plan with Energy Rubric
Template B) 50 Year Energy Plan with Customizable Energy Source Rubric
Trade screenshots with a partner. Paste your partner's final 50-Year Energy Plan below.
Introduce the problem you are trying to solve.
Describe what requirements must be met (the constraints) in order to successfully meet your goal.
Describe the criteria that will be used to judge the created solution.
Make a claim as to what you think is most important of the criteria and explain why.
Detail what may happen if a plan is not implemented.
Your plan
Describe the strategy of your plan
Describe the strengths and weaknesses of your plan
Competing plan
Describe the strategy of the competing plan
Describe the strengths and weaknesses of the competing plan
Restate which criteria you found most important and state which plan best fulfills that priority.
Describe the differences between your plan and the competitor’s plan in terms of the criteria and strategy.
Conclude which plan you find better and explain why.
What challenges do you envision in implementing your solution? Have you made any assumptions?
What problems may still remain if your proposed plan is implemented?
What technological breakthroughs might change your plan design? How might it change?
How have you grown as a scientist or engineer or how did you use the tools or the mindset of an engineer to improve your design? Explain an example.
Overall, what is the value of applying STEM to Engineering Design?