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The Videos
Power Systems Journey: Questions and Stories for the Energy Transition is a documentary initiative funded by the Institute on the Environment through a Mini Grant.
Completed in 2025, the grant initiative uses the story of the Grand Challenge Curriculum class, “Power Systems Journey: Making the Invisible Visible and Actionable,” to explore energy transition questions and stories in a short documentary video. Through the collaborative process, additional video interviews were developed as well as resources for further learning.
Join co-instructors Paul Imbertson and Jonee Kulman Brigham, their students, and collaborating energy leaders on a journey through the electric grid, showcasing the human elements of the power system, and its geographies, as we transition into Minnesota’s climate future. Using multimedia class documentation and expert commentary, the video will explore topics such as: What are the lessons we can learn from energy history to inform the future? What kind of energy stories would engage the public to learn and care about energy transition issues? What values and goals should inform the energy transition? How might the energy transition re-imagine our electric generation, distribution, use, ownership, (and everything else) about our energy systems to achieve our goals?
View videos below - or go to the YouTube Playlist for Power Systems Journey
The Main Video (<30 minutes)
The Main Video (<30 minutes)
Extended Interviews with Energy Experts and Class Leaders
Extended Interviews with Energy Experts and Class Leaders
Kathryn Milun
Kathryn Milun
Kathryn Milun is a professor of anthropology at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. She is also an affiliate faculty member at the Minnesota Law School and at the Minnesota Design Center on the Twin Cities Campus. She is the founder of a research initiative called the Solar Commons Project.
Robert Blake
Robert Blake
Robert Blake is the owner of Solar Bear, pronounced Gizis-o-makwa in Ojibwe, a solar development company located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Also, Robert is the Executive Director of Native Sun Community Power Development, a Non-Profit likewise located in Minneapolis. Robert is a tribal citizen of the Red Lake Nation. His passion is spreading the word about renewable energy through communication, cooperation, and collaboration.
Shane Stennes
Shane Stennes
Shane Stennes is the chief sustainability officer for the University of Minnesota system. He works across all the University of Minnesota's 5 campuses and other operations around the State to lead strategic initiatives and programs around the goal to build a fully sustainable future.
Aaron Hanson
Aaron Hanson
Aaron Hanson is an energy program specialist for the Learning and Development department at the Institute, on the Environment, on the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, campus. Aaron also teaches Sustainable Housing - Community, Environment, and Technology for the Environmental Sciences, Policy and Management program.
Amethyst O'Connell
Amethyst O'Connell
Amethyst O'Connell was one of the students in the first Power Systems Journey class as an electrical engineering student, and then became a teaching assistant for several years after that before graduating and working as an electrical designer.
Carl Knetsch
Carl Knetsch
Carl Knetsch was grad student studying environmental policy when he took the Power Systems Journey class. After graduation, Carl became a guest instructor for the class and also works as an energy auditor.
Massoud Amin
Massoud Amin
Massoud Amin is the Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of Energy Policy and Security Associates He was a professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and served as the Honeywell H.W. Sweatt Chair in Technological Leadership and the Director of the Technological Leadership Institute. He is widely credited as being the “father of smart grids”, and a cyber-physical security leader. For more information, please see https://massoud-amin.umn.edu or connect on LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/massoudamin
Michael Noble
Michael Noble
Michael Noble is semi-retired, consulting through Noble ideas, Llc with clients in the private sector and in philanthropy and government. He is a longtime clean energy and environmental advocate in the nonprofit space. For nearly 30 years he was the CEO of fresh energy and worked on the electricity system, transportation, the built environment, and industrial and agricultural decarbonization.
Video Grant Acknowledgements
Video Grant Acknowledgements
Project Leadership Team / Featured Video Speakers
Jonee Kulman Brigham, Minnesota Design Center, College of Design, University of Minnesota
Paul Imbertson, College of Science and Engineering, University of Minnesota
Amethyst O'Connell
Advisors / Featured Video Speakers
Michael Noble
Massoud Amin
Robert Blake
Shane Stennes
Aaron Hanson
Kathryn Milun
Carl Knetsch
Advisor/ Video Producer
Audrey Favorito, Wild Carrot Productions, LLC
Additional Advisors
Beth Mercer-Taylor
Neva Hubbert
Bjornar Helliesen
Brooke Bear
Tyler Wolfe
Support
This video was produced as part of the Mini-Grant “Power Systems Journey: Questions and Stories for the Energy Transition” which was funded by the Institute on the Environment at the University of Minnesota from 2024-2025.
Full Spring Studio, LLC hosts the website and provided funding to edit the extended interviews.
And more acknowledgements from the Class over time
The Power Systems Journey class was offered from Spring 2019 through Fall 2023. It was made possible by the University of Minnesota’s Grand Challenge Curriculum, many partners who offered resources, lectures, and tours, and the heroes of the journey: the many students who worked together to explore the electric grid and share its stories with the public.
More about the grant
More about the grant
Mini Grant Abstract
This initiative will use the story of the Grand Challenge Curriculum class, “Power Systems Journey: Making the Invisible Visible and Actionable,” to explore energy transition questions and stories in a short documentary video. Join co-instructors Paul Imbertson and Jonee Kulman Brigham, their students, and collaborating energy leaders on a journey through the electric grid, showcasing the human elements of the power system, and its geographies, as we transition into Minnesota’s climate future. Using multimedia class documentation and expert commentary, the video will explore topics such as: What are the lessons we can learn from energy history to inform the future? What kind of energy stories would engage the public to learn and care about energy transition issues? What values and goals should inform the energy transition? How might the energy transition re-imagine our electric generation, distribution, use, ownership, (and everything else) about our energy systems to achieve our goals?
Proposal narrative
Statement of Need
We are in a crisis of communication about the energy transition–a necessary component of
responding to climate change. We have the technology to make widespread change, but we lack public energy literacy, equitable participation, political will, and the needed energy transition workforce. Power Systems Journey has been a powerful class to educate students about the power system using Minnesota as ground for exploration, and this short documentary video will do the same for the public, contributing toward a carbon-neutral Minnesota and a just energy transition.
The electric grid is central to the energy transition. In the U.S. the electric grid has developed over a century, with major development in the 60s. The grid as it stands is inadequate for this transition. We need to know the past and understand what has shaped the grid we have, so we can imagine and design how we build the grid of the future.
This work involves everyone. While many think of the grid as power plants and the wires overhead, the grid extends into our homes and businesses in how we purchase, and use our technology, and it is dependent on public-influenced political will to enact changes in policy. This depends on widespread public understanding, yet to most people the grid is invisible or vaguely understood. The grid is a commons on which everyone depends, and it depends on everyone to provide input, express values, and play their part.
Existing communication about the grid is technical, which fails to engage the public in a just way, especially in communities most impacted by the reliability of the grid. Storytelling has been shown to be an effective way to include more people in the conversation. We have a projected energy transition workforce shortage and to fill this gap, we need ways excite youth and those starting their careers, or new careers, to consider the many ways they can be part of this growing economic sector.
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