Unit Overview
How can we design more reliable systems to meet our communities’ energy needs?
This unit uses the 2021 Texas power crisis to help students explore energy transfer, system reliability, and engineering tradeoffs. Through real-world context and a culminating design task, students learn how energy systems work and propose reliable solutions that reflect their communities’ needs and values.
*This performance expectation is developed across multiple units.
†This performance expectation is developed across multiple courses.
Performance Expectations:
HS-PS2-5*, HS-PS3-5†, HS-PS3-2†, HS-PS3-3, HS-ETS1-3†, HS-ESS3-2†, *, †
Lesson Set 1: how does electricity transfer through systems to power communities, and what causes instability in these systems?
Lesson 1
What can we learn from a blackout in Texas about producing reliable energy for our communities?
Lesson 2
What structures in the system enable energy transfer from one source to multiple devices, buildings, and neighborhoods?
Lesson 3
Could the blackouts in Texas have been caused by a broken or short-circuited circuit?
Lesson 4
What makes an energy source reliable?
Lesson 5
Where does electrical energy come from?
Lesson 6
How does energy transfer in wires?
Lesson 7
What could have caused the disparities we saw in the blackouts in Texas?
Lesson 8
Why do design solutions affect some people differently than others?
Lesson Set 2: why do design solutions affect some people differently than others
Lesson 9a
How can energy storage make our systems more reliable during an energy crisis?