Visualizing Our Energy Data Future
hello everyone my name is nikita raj and
i’m a junior in high school
i’ve always loved teaching kids and
about four years ago
i was presented with the opportunity to
learn something that i passionately
believe
should be taught to kids at an early age
over the past few years i’ve worked with
professors researching energy usage in
households
and how education to children at an
early age can make a big difference
we’re growing up in a rapidly changing
world with terabytes and petabytes of
data
and we should be better equipped to
understand it this needs to be done
starting at an early age kids are not
given sufficient education about how to
understand data
related to energy usage and how to
change their household activities
after interpreting their data otherwise
known as energy data thinking
this disconnect between our advancing
data atmosphere and the lagging
education regarding it needs to be
addressed
i had the opportunity to survey kids in
my community about their knowledge of
of energy data science and their
thoughts on how it would be used in the
future
a majority of the students surveyed said
they have not used
data science nor were they interested in
energy data thinking
this is a huge problem
i want everyone to stop and think about
the last time you saw your energy bill
i know i know not the most fun thing to
remember but try to think back to it
you either tore up in your envelope or
clicked on the email from your utility
company
after looking at the little charts and
the balance that was due what did you do
here’s what my parents used to do they
would glance at the number
tell my sister and me to turn off the
lights when we left our rooms
and we would all move on until we
received another bill the following
month
this became a cycle and there wasn’t
much change in how we used our energy
then in the eighth grade i started
assisting a professor with research on a
really interesting project
that dealt with energy usage in
households and data analysis
we started teaching students about the
significance of their energy usage
how to interpret their household data
and how to create an action plan
this is when i came across the world of
energy data thinking
the amount of new information absorbed
was not only eye-opening
but a little bit disappointing because i
hadn’t learned this crucial information
earlier
and it had the potential to work towards
a more sustainable world so let me take
a step back and share some of this
information with you
most of us have seen data tables and
basic graphs but how much are you really
able to absorb what’s being presented
how do you think the manipulation of
data sets affects your ability to
internalize
information and make corresponding
changes to your lifestyle
let’s look at these graphs together what
information can you observe from the
first graph
maybe after reading the x and y axis
looking at the title
and just looking at the graph as a whole
you can get an idea of what’s going on
you see that the information being
presented to you is about energy usage
but there’s not too much more that’s
easily understandable
now let’s look at this next graph
this one is a little bit more visually
interactive you can clearly see that the
most energy was used on march 12th
so you probably have a few questions why
did my family use the most energy on the
12th and what happened that day
maybe we can look at the same data in a
different way
we can see that the 12th is a friday so
maybe we can gain some insight here
what do you typically do on fridays
that’s different do you wake up earlier
or do you stay up later watching your
favorite tv show
so let’s look at the 12th with this in
mind we can see that on the 12th the
energy had three peaks
the first at 9am the second around 12pm
and the third around 9pm this
information is super important
one of the things that i learned about
was the time of use window
this is a predefined time interval
during the day typically around 4 to 9
pm
when more families are using energy at
the same time
during these hours clean energy sources
are not able to dispense enough energy
to provide for all the houses that are
cooking dinner
turning on their lights running their
sprinklers or using large appliances
like the tv washer and dryer
to meet that energy demand your utility
company pulls from dirty resources
now you may be wondering what is clean
and energy
clean and dirty energy energy can come
from different sources
but when talking about how it’s made we
categorize it in the two main types
clean energy and dirty energy clean
energy sources are most commonly biomass
geothermal hydropower solar and wind
dirty energy sources are most commonly
coal plants
according to the climate reality project
coal accounted for
45 of global energy related carbon
dioxide emissions
in 2011. this is the world’s leading
source
of energy-related carbon pollution when
pulling energy from dirty sources
not only is it bad for the environment
but it also costs the utility company
more
which in turn increases your uh which in
turn
costs you more to avoid adding carbon
dioxide to the environment
and to lower your energy bills it’s
important to create an action plan to
change your energy habits
changing your energy habits cannot be
like making these new use resolutions
that you forget after january
they need to last the first step should
be for you and your family to sit down
and set a goal
start by looking at what energy
consuming activities you typically do in
your household and what times you do
them
let me show you my family’s activities
from last march
this graph shows the activities we did
from 7am to 11pm
we noticed that in the time of use
window between 4 and 9
we were doing the majority of our energy
consuming activities
such as preparing meals and watching tv
after looking at this data i talked
about the insights i gathered from our
energy usage with my parents
and i shared the information that i
collected with through graphs
we decided that we wanted to save money
on our electricity bill and decrease the
use of dirty energy sources
so we were all going to work towards
reducing our energy consumption
we made a plan and started working on
some energy saving habits
we learned we could do a number of
things to save on our energy bill
for example by all of us eating together
in one place at one time
going on walks during the time of use
window avoiding using large appliances
like the washer
dryer and tv during these hours we could
save a lot of money on our electricity
bill and decrease our total energy usage
now in 2020 things have changed with the
global pandemic we now have more family
members at home
and we’re spending more time on our
devices so it’s all the more important
to keep working towards decreasing
energy usage
and to keep energy consuming activities
out of the time of use window
let me show you my family’s activities
from this year as you can see
we’ve made a habit to decrease energy
consuming activities
during this time of use window i felt
accomplished knowing we were able to
use energy data thinking to change the
way that my family use energy
and that we were taking steps towards
creating a more sustainable world
after this i came to realize that kids
can play
a very important role in decreasing
energy usage in a household
including changing energy consuming
activities
most kids are not given the exposure to
data related to energy usage or taught
about creating lasting action plans
but closing the gaps in education
related to energy data thinking
could be key to a future of a greener
earth
teachers policy makers and other
educators must ensure
that energy data thinking is taught from
a very early age
it’s important to realize the potential
of energy education
because students require an
understanding of what energy data is
how to analyze visualizations and how to
take action based on their observations
thank you