Selecting Sites for Renewable Energy Projects

Glenn A. Richard, Mineral Physics Institute, Stony Brook University

This material was originally created for On the Cutting Edge: Professional Development for Geoscience Faculty
and is replicated here as part of the SERC Pedagogic Service.

Summary

Google Earth View of Geothermal Power Facilities

Society's efforts to find and develop renewable energy sources are driven by the need to mitigate detrimental environmental effects brought about by some current sources, and supply problems associated with using non-renewable sources. For these reasons, energy issues are currently prominent in the media. Future scientists and other citizens need to become literate concerning the technical aspects of using renewable energy sources.

In this activity, undergraduate students use Google Earth to investigate a variety of renewable energy sources and select sites within the United States that would be appropriate for projects based on those sources. These sources include solar energy, bioenergy, hydroelectricity, tidal power, wind energy, wave energy, and geothermal energy.

Learning Goals

Students:

Use Google Earth to explore a variety of renewable energy sources
Use maps and other data to select sites where these energy sources can be used
Create map overlays on Google Earth
Use Google Earth to map and document sites for renewable energy projects
Evaluate a set of maps that use a variety of means of displaying information about bionergy in the United States

Context for Use

This activity is suitable for:

Introductory undergraduate geoscience and environmental studies courses for majors in these areas as well as non-majors
Upper level undergraduate courses that focus on energy or environmental issues
Advanced high school Earth science or physics courses

The activity needs to be conducted in a computer laboratory, where all students can work at computer stations individually or in pairs. The laboratory also needs to be equipped with an instructor station connected to a projector so that the students can observe what the instructor is doing during the activity. All stations must have internet access, and have Google Earth and a web browser installed. The instructor should have enough prior knowledge of Google Earth to be able to troubleshoot common problems related to errors that students may make. The students should know how to use the Fly To tab in the Search pane, how to zoom in and out, and how to pan the view. They also need to know how to create folders, overlays, and placemarks in Google Earth. They should be familiar with the navigation controls and components of the toolbar. The students must have access to accounts that enable them to visit off-campus web sites. The operating system should be configured to recognize kmz files, so that the browser offers to open them in Google Earth.

Prior to participating in this activity, the students need to have an understanding of the following energy-related concepts:

The laws of thermodynamics
Units of energy
Potential energy, including formulas
Kinetic energy, including formulas
Power, including formulas
The water cycle
Photosynthesis

This exercise was originally used in an undergraduate course at Stony Brook University - GEO 311: Geoscience and Global Concerns. Enrollment in the course was a mixture of geoscience and non-geoscience majors.

Description and Teaching Materials

Students need to following handout to guide the activity:
Word document (Microsoft Word 55kB Oct22 08) or pdf document (Acrobat (PDF) 56kB Oct22 08)

In addition, they need to be given a link to the following data file (zip format), which contains two Google Earth KMZ files:
Data File (Zip Archive 759kB Oct21 08)

Also hand out the one-page Google Earth Tip Sheet (.pdf)
Google Earth Tip Sheet (Acrobat (PDF) 440kB Nov20 08)

The Google Earth Student User Guide will also be helpful to them.

Teaching Notes and Tips

This activity is designed for one class session of about 80 minutes or two class sessions of at least 40 minutes each. Actual time needed for this exercise may vary depending upon the amount of previous experience students have had using Google Earth and the amount of time devoted to informal discussion during the exercise. The exercise may require two periods of 80 minutes each if the students are not yet familiar with creating overlays and placemarks in Google Earth.

The Google Earth data file provided with this exercise contains examples of overlays. If the students are not familiar with how to create their own overlays and placemarks, this needs to be demonstrated for them. A good example for them to begin with is to overlay the California map from the Energy Information Administration's Energy Potential Maps web page that is referenced in their handout. They should then open the Environmental Protection Agency's Maps and Incentive Sheets page to open the Renewable Energy Interactive Map data on Google Earth. This file contains placemarks of polluted sites that indicate their suitability as sources of various forms of renewable energy. With that data and the California Overlay, the students can identify and placemark an appropriate site for a solar energy project for practice.

Google Earth with overlays of maps from the Energy Information Administration and data on polluted sites with potential for renewable energy development from the Environmental Protection Agency.

Undergraduate students typically find Google Earth intuitive and easy to use concerning navigation and viewing of mapped data. During the activity, it is important to have available people who can assist students who have problems while using the computer stations. Assistants need to have good prior knowledge about the subject matter and about the techniques of using Google Earth. If this exercise constitutes the students' first exposure to Google Earth, they may initially need some help learning how expand and collapse the listings of data in the Places pane. Some people find saving Google Earth data confusing. Students should be made aware of the online resources that provide information on using Google Earth.

It is best to associate the exercise with some discussion in order to stimulate ideas among the students about complex interrelationships between components of the Earth system. The students learn most effectively if the instructor conducts periodic class discussions about the questions during the activity, even though it may make the assessment process less rigorous if the handouts are to be returned to the instructor for grading. Alternatively, a discussion could be conducted after the handouts are graded and returned to the students, but that unless that is done in a computer laboratory, this would prevent the discussion from being integrated with use of the computer stations.

In GEO 311: Geoscience and Global Concerns at Stony Brook University, we engaged the students periodically in informal discussion during the exercise, and had them hand it in at the end of the session for grading. They need to be provided with a means of handing in a Google Earth kmz file electronically in response to question 1. For question 2, they can either be asked to write the answer on the handout for submission, or they can be required to hand it in electronically.

Assessment

Assessment of the students' understanding of topic can be accomplished through:

Observation of their responses during discussion that accompanies the activity
Grading of the answers that students supply on their handout and in the kmz file that they submit electronically
Students' answers to questions about the material in class quizzes or exams

Since some components of this exercise call for qualitative judgments on the part of students, which may reasonably be expected to vary, grading should be somewhat for these portions, in order to enable the students to feel comfortable being creative.