Students develop an understanding of how energy is used every day in a developed country and compare that usage to typical citizens in least developed countries.
Students research and define energy poverty and describe how that definition changes based on a range of scopes from smaller and more localized views up to a global perspective.
Students develop interview questions and interview someone that experiences or has experienced energy poverty
Through the series of activities below the students will consider and research important ideas and requirements regarding their design challenge. These activities are designed to help the students create a knowledge base for the activity in order to proceed towards asking important questions that will further define their product.
Identify the Problem
Identify and explain the engineering problem you are trying to solve. This step should not include any information about a solution for the problem. (Note: Engineers generally receive problems to solve from clients. In this step, they are making more concrete the specific problem that has been given to them. It is similar in nature to, but less specific than, the focused "Define" step in Design Thinking.)
In this challenge we are asking students to empathize with a user that deals with energy poverty and try to create a potential solution to a problem that users face due to barriers to using modern utilities. In some cases that may be a complete lack of access to infrastructure, such as in sub-Saharan Africa. In other cases it may be that energy is available for use but at a cost that is prohibitive to the user for any variety of reasons. While we will ask the students to examine these vastly different extremes used to define energy poverty you may choose to direct the challenge more specifically in one of these directions depending on your preferences for more local or more global action.
In any case it is expected that the students develop some method or product that has potential for actual deployment, is realistically scalable, and reasonably affordable.