SimEnergy 2 teachers notes



SimEnergy 2 teachers notes

 

Outline

Sim Energy 2 is a learning game about renewable energy. Like ‘The Sims’, you are looking after a family, keeping their home powered. In this scenario, the government has set a carbon dioxide quota, so you have to switch away from using grid electricity, to generating by installing renewables. The challenge is to work out which ones are most cost effective, so that the supply can meet the family’s demand. In this way SimEnergy 2 teaches about the advantages and disadvantages of renewable energy sources like solar, wind, water and geothermal. The game is easy to use and fits into an hour's lesson, including a plenary session.

 

National Curriculum links

14-16: How Science Works

• Communication skills: using qualitative and quantitative approaches, analysing and applying scientific information

• Applications and implications of science: the benefits and drawbacks (economic costs) of technological developments

14-16 Breadth of Study

• Energy, electricity and radiation: energy transfers can be measured, which is important in considering the economic costs of energy use

• electrical power is readily transferred and controlled, and can be used in a range of different situations

GCSE specifications links

Edexcel

• Core: Topic 10 - You're in Charge: “the environmental effects of energy use.”

AQA

• Core: Physics 1a - Energy and Electricity: "How should we generate electricity"

Twenty First Century Science

• Corel: P3 – Radioactive materials: "How can electricity be generated?"

Gateway

• Core: P2 – Living for the future: "Collecting energy from the sun"

Try the activity

Instructions

• The game works is designed for PC computers only. Your PC will need to have the 'Flash' plug-in installed

• Download the 'zip' file (this means it's compressed) to your machine

• 'Unzip' the file using a programme like 'winzip' (you can get a free trial copy from ). This will place the files in a new folder

• Double click 'SimEnergy2.exe' to start

 

Running the activity

It’s possible to introduce and play Sim Energy 2, with a plenary session, all within one hour. Play the game first yourself to become familiar with it and to identify teaching points you want to bring out.

Sim Energy 2 is a turn-based game. A turn consists of investigating various renewables and the power they will generate in various places, and installing the one that will be best value. Each time you play is like moving the house to a different location; the power output from each renewable varies. You can also choose to install a battery to store the generated electricity). After you click ‘end your turn’, you see what the impact of your choices is, by watching a speeded up version of the next month in the life of the family. At the end you get feedback in the form of graphs energy demand and supply (which both vary during each day), so you can see whether you renewables are generating enough energy.

The main goal is to survive 4 months. Since you can only install one renewable per month, your supply from renewables will initially be topped up to meet demand, using electricity from the grid. But because of the carbon dioxide quota, this will soon run out, leaving you the challenge of powering the home solely with renewable energy for the remaining months.

Pupils can compete to see who can finish the game with the highest budget. High scores can be achieved by investigating carefully which renewable produces the most energy in which location, and balancing this against the cost of installing the device. Pupils should realise that solar devices only supply energy during daylight hours, and wind power also varies. Water and geothermal provide more consistent sources.

An extension activity could be for those pupils who manage to achieve high scores work up an explanation of their strategy using scientific concepts.

 

Teaching Points for Plenary Session

While the game provides pupils with first-hand experience of the concepts, it is vital for them to reflect on these, and how they apply to the real world. During the plenary, you might want to have the game running on a projector or whiteboard, and stop it to illustrate teaching points. Note: on the graphs of supply and demand, you can click on each renewable to show/hide its contribution.

|Teaching point |How the game illustrates this |

|Renewables are ‘dilute’ sources of |You have to fill your land with renewables to generate enough power for your home |

|energy, compared to fossil fuels | |

|The power output from renewables varies |Solar panel output increases and then drops during the day, as does that from wind |

| |turbines. The power output e.g. wind speed varies around the property. |

|Because of its variability, renewable |A battery keeps the supply from renewables more constant, to meet the peaks of demand|

|energy needs to be stored |– which can be in the evening when there is no solar power |

|Solar energy can be used to heat water, |There are two solar-powered devices: water heaters, and solar panels |

|or converted into electricity | |

|How energy demand varies during the day |The graph shows peaks during the morning and evening, and these must be met by |

| |generating renewable energy or there will be power cuts |

|A carbon dioxide quota is a way to limit |You have a quota of 200kg of carbon dioxide at the beginning. As you take grid |

|emission of greenhouse gases |electricity, this drops. When it is all gone, you are reliant on renewable energy. |

 Changing game difficulty

The game parameters have been adjusted so it is not too difficult to win after a few attempts. You can adjust some of these by opening the text file ‘params_game2.txt’ within the game folder. You can make the game very challenging but still winnable by reducing the budget (bottom of text) value from 1000 to 800.

 

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