All About Energy

We all use energy every day – from turning on a light to charging our cellphone – but many of us don’t give much thought to where that energy comes from or how it reaches our homes.

A group of students at the Montana Science Center recently got a chance to learn all about energy thanks to a partnership between the Montana Science Center and NorthWestern Energy. The Montana Science Center is an educational nonprofit museum in Bozeman, Montana. It has an interactive exhibit space and offers STEM programming for all ages. One key program is Homeschool Science, a series of weekly science classes for 8- to 13-year-old homeschool students.

“Our focus for this semester is energy systems,” said Quincy Balius, Education Coordinator at the Montana Science Center.

To help explain energy systems, NorthWestern Energy Engineers Jon Shafer and Brandt Seitz developed a game where students start their own energy company and decide how to power a city and a town in their service area.

NorthWestern Energy Engineer Jon Shafer helps students at the Montana Science Center in Bozeman with a game that simulates running an electric company.

Brandt got the idea for the game from games like Sim City and Settlers of Catan. In Brandt’s game, each team is given a set amount of money and has to decide what kind of power generation to build. They can choose from wind, solar, natural gas, coal and hydro. Jon and Brandt taught the students about the importance of a balanced energy portfolio. Wind, for example, is an inexpensive resource, but it only produces power when the wind is blowing.

Once the two teams laid out their energy grid, Brandt used past data from NorthWestern’s own generation portfolio to see how each of the energy companies would have performed in different situations. Sometimes the teams were able to generate enough electricity to meet their customers’ demand, and sometimes they had to buy it off the open market.

“I liked getting to do the game,” student Sara Watling said.

The goal was to paint a broad picture of what energy companies have to think about to deliver reliable, affordable and sustainable energy, Brandt said.

Students decide where to place generation facilities while playing a game that simulates running an electric company.

In all of her classes, Quincy focuses on the real-world implications of what students are learning.

“I like to talk about how this works in our local community,” she said. “They can get a sense of what this looks like in real life.”

At the end of the semester, the students will put all their knowledge of energy systems to use by creating a circuit dollhouse. Each room of the dollhouse will have a small-scale circuit that mimics large-scale circuits in an actual home. The house will have working lights, fans and other appliances, as well as solar cells on the roof.

Students decide where to place generation facilities while playing a game that simulates running an electric company.

Once the house is complete, it will be on display at the Montana Science Center so other visitors can learn about how electricity flows through a home.

“I’m really passionate about this group,” Quincy said. “They’re a really smart group of kids.”