EIA’s New Interactive Maps: State Energy Portal

According to the the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), its state energy portal is “the most comprehensive, dynamic, and interactive view of the U.S. government’s national and state energy data and information currently available to the public.”

The profile/map for NC can be found here. By clicking on the “Layers/Legend” tab and selecting one of five available base maps, educators can customize maps and charts for classroom use. Maps can be created to show availability of energy sources, transmission lines, major power plants as well as renewable energy potential for North Carolina.  Electricity, nuclear, natural gas and renewable energy profiles for the state are also available along with supporting data tables in Microsoft Excel. Also, by clicking on a specific power plant, the portal links users directly to that plant’s data in EIA’s electricity data browser (see corresponding blog post).

This tool also shows how NC ranks in comparison to the other 49 states in terms of energy production, consumption, prices for electricity and natural gas, and carbon dioxide emissions.

ChokePoint US: Energy Used in the Water Cycle

I recently learned about a project from Circle of Blue called ChokePoint: US, a four-month reporting project where journalists set out to better understand what is occurring in the places where rising energy demand collides with diminishing supplies of fresh water.  Check out the website for featured stories, multimedia and infographics about hydropower, coal, oil, tar sands, fracking, and renewables.

Check out the interactive infographic titled: Energy Used in the Water Cycle that details the amount of electricity that is needed to transport, distribute and treat the water we use in our homes and businesses as well as the industrial and agricultural sectors.  While electricity plays a role in many steps of this water cycle, most electricity use occurs with the end users – customers who heat water to bathe, cook, etc.

For those of you who take your students on tours of water treatment plants or waste water treatment plants, consider asking the plant operators to discuss the plant’s use of electricity to pump, move and treat water.

 

Electricity data browser from EIA

The U.S. Energy Information Administration recently posted an electricity data browser to show generation, consumption, fossil fuel receipts, stockpiles, retail sales, and electricity prices. The data appear on an interactive web page and are updated each month; annual, quarterly and monthly data are available from 2001-2011. All images and datasets are available for download.  Furthermore, data sets can be filtered by fuel type, geographic region or state, or energy sector, enabling you to customize data sets and graphs for your state or region.

I encourage you to check out this tool to get up to date US energy data and to create customized graphs for use in the classroom. For example, this tool can be used to quickly get data and corresponding graphs to answer a variety of questions such as:

How much of NC’s electricity generation comes from biomass? natural gas? coal?

How does NC’s consumption of biomass compare the US as a whole?

How has NC’s consumption of natural gas changed since 2001?

Which region of the US is generating the most electricity from natural gas?

New interactive tool for exploring future U.S. energy-use scenarios

Last week, the U.S. Department of Energy released an interactive online tool “to help researchers, educators, and students explore future U.S. energy-use scenarios.” The Buildings Industry Transportation Electricity Scenarios (BITES) Tool is a scenario-based tool for analyzing how changes in energy demand and supply by economic sector can impact carbon dioxide emissions.

This web-based tool can be used in the middle and high school classroom to enable students to manipulate inputs, such as energy sources used for electricity generation and transportation fuel use, and to compare outputs and impacts on carbon dioxide emissions and the U.S. energy mix to the year 2050. Output data are made available in graphic form giving your students exposure to interpreting graphs.

To get started, watch the 4 minute intro video on the BITES website and then view scenarios that have already been created or, after a quick registration process, you can start building your own scenario.  A good starting point would be to show your students either the 2010 or 2011 Annual Energy Outlook (U.S. Energy Information Administration) base case.  By not making any changes to the inputs for this base scenario, the outputs will reflect current projections for the “business as usual” scenario. From here students can create their own scenarios, making modifications to one or more economic sectors and then comparing outputs to those of the base case.

Educator resources, including a tutorial and an online learning module are going to be available soon.

The BITES team is very interested in feedback, suggestions and lesson plans developed using the BITES tool! Please consider providing feedback on ways to improve the website and interface as well as sharing the lessons you build around using the BITES Tool. Feedback can be sent to bites@nrel.gov.

 

Burn: An Energy Journal

BURN: An Energy Journal is the flagship program of The Public Radio Energy Project and winner of the 2012 American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS) Kavli Science Journalism Award for their documentary special titled Particles: Nuclear Power After Fukushima (54 minutes in 3 segments) that examines the future of nuclear power one year after the disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant in Japan..

Two other documentaries are available, The Hunt for Oil: Risks  and Rewards and The Power of One a two hour special that includes segments on fracking in Pennsylvania, drilling for oil in the Arctic and the quest to build better batteries.

The SWITCH Energy Project

In November, I attended the Geological Society of America’s annual meeting in Charlotte, NC and I heard geologist Dr. Scott Tinker discuss his new energy documentary Switch, which has evolved into a larger project, the SWITCH Energy Project, consisting of a documentary film, video excerpts and an education program.

While I haven’t seen the film yet, it promises to be an “agenda-free documentary, embraced across political lines.” According to the website, the goal in making this documentary was “not to advocate for one technology over another, not to suggest how the transition should happen — but to try to determine how it actually would happen, based on scientifically-sound investigation and the practical realities of the world of energy as we discovered them.”

A two-minute trailer is available for viewing and approximately 300 short videos, organized by resource and topic are also available!  Video-based lesson plans, co-developed by the American Geosciences Institute (AGI) are coming soon.

If you get a chance to see the film and/or utilize the short videos, please leave a comment about this resource.

Introduction to Geothermal Energy Slide Show

The Geothermal Education Office (GEO) is  non-profit organization funded by the US Dept of Energy as well as geothermal industry sponsors to” promote public understanding about geothermal resources and its importance in providing clean sustainable energy while protecting our environment.”   Their website has numerous resources for teaching about geothermal energy and of particular interest is the geothermal slide show and slide index which includes 122 slides that can be incorporated into classroom presentations about geothermal energy.

Teacher Resources from KidWind.org

I featured the Windwise curriculum from The KidWind Project in a previous post but KidWind recently updated its website to include a comprehensive set of teacher resources pertaining to wind energy.  Check out the free resources available to support classroom instruction of wind energy:

Powerpoint presentations on wind energy, solar energy and electricity fundamentals.

Energy-related Activities (pdf format) designed to be quick and easy to integrate into the classroom.

How to Videos to support use of KidWind products as well as wind energy instruction.

Wind Forecast Improvement Project

I just learned about NOAA’s Wind Forecast Improvement Project being conducted in partnership with the Department of Energy.   The goal of this project is to forecast when wind speed will increase or decrease in an effort to help “electric grid operators keep the grid stable by balancing the variable amount of power produced from wind farms by increasing or decreasing power production from conventional generation stations, including coal and natural gas.” The motivation for acquiring this knowledge is to “improve efficiency of operation of these fossil fuel plants, as well as the entire electrical grid system, resulting in lower costs as well as lower CO2 emissions.”

Two videos are available that describe this research project:

A 2:42 minute video (NOAA website)

A 5:32 video (YouTube)

Observed and modeled (forecast) wind profile data are available for Northern (ND,SD,MN,NE) and Southern (TX) study sites.  These plots show both wind speed (in m/s and knots) and wind direction throughout the vertical air column (from appx 400m to 2500m). For more information about interpreting wind barbs, click here.

James Wilczak from NOAA, selected one plot (see below) to share with you that depicts “a nice example of what is called the nocturnal Low Level Jet (LLJ), a layer of accelerated winds that occurs at night over much of the Great Plains and is one of the reasons why the Plains are such a good wind resource.” The LLJ winds are the higher speed winds shown as yellow. The model (bottom plot) gets the general idea correct, but misses the strongest speeds at the start of the LLJ (Hours 02-04 UTC).”

To acquire this set of plots from the WFIP tool, select Colorado City and then May 4th, 2012. Then click on the gray box labeled “NCEP RR” and then below that the blue box labeled “SPD HR.”

Wilczak also provided an example that illustrates how forecasting can be useful to grid operators.   Data from Buffalo, SD on May 3rd, 2012 illustrates “a nice transition of stronger NW winds to a period of near calm, followed by stronger southerly winds.  These are the types of transitions that it is important for grid operators to see coming. The model underestimates the speed of the NW winds, but does pretty well with the calm period and start of the southerly winds.”

To acquire this set of plots from the from the WFIP tool select Buffalo, SD and then select the date May 3, 2012 and then click on the Gray “RUC” box and then blue “SPD HR” box.

As always, I’d love to hear how you use this tool with your students!

Visualizing the Wind: A Wind Map Art Project

Two designers, Fernanda Viegas and Martin Wattenberg, have just made a moving map of the wind with surface wind data acquired from the government’s National Digital Forecast Database and updated hourly.  Here you can view an animated map that will show you today’s wind patterns as well as a Gallery of archived maps to enable users to compare a variety of wind patterns.   Students could compare this dynamic representation with NREL’s wind resource maps to understand variations in wind resource potential across the US.