PowerPlay : the educative workshop of the energy transition

AI Quick Summary

We think knowledge is key to the energy transition ! And the best way we found to spread it is to make it appear fun and non-judgmental.PowerPlay is a pedagogical workshop aiming to make various audiences (politicians, media, companies, local communities...) understand the challenges of the energy transition (decarbonization, efficiency, consumption, security of supply...) and acquire a grasp of the orders of magnitude. In groups, players decide on which electrical production units they want to invest with their own characteristics (deployment and operational costs, build time, summer / winter production, CO2...) and must do their best to provide the population with power all year long and until 2050.The data from the cards are all based on the reference scientific reports (BFE, PSI, IEA...) to make sure the game is as realistic as possible, though remaining rather easy to grasp.The goals are multifold : educate the general public to the subject, spread the sense of urgency to take strong decisions regarding energy savings / production in Switzerland, encourage transpartisan dialogue to find consensus and accelerate the transition...The V1 of the workshop is currently being rolled out locally after months of tests & development. An energy-savvy facilitator is currently needed to clarify the rules, give more information on the many questions regarding energy, raise open questions to ensure dialogue, we do not imagine the game as a stand-alone as it would need to be oversimplified (thus not realistic anymore)...We are happy with the result and the feedbacks so far are excellent, however we also see the limits of the products in its current form, especially the fact that the life of the product needs too much involvement (time & energy) from the two co-creators and their extensive knowledge of the field, the game mechanisms and the hypothesis / reports used to create the game.We realize that we want to go towards a V2 with a small app accompanying the team helping us to :update datamanage multiple languages (so far, we have only a french version and want to quickly add english and german without tripling the physical material necessary)ease up the logistics of play so that participants can concentrate even more on debate and knowledge rather than moving tokensmanage more participants per facilitator (currently a maximum of 15, we could triple this with enhanced ergonomy)deploy the game more quickly throughout the country, and not needing necessarily an energy specialist as facilitatorgive additional information to the public if desiredWe also want to integrate in a further stage the situation of our german & french neighbours, enabling various groups to interact through power trading between the 3 countries, making countries interdependency understandable.If the full workshop will remain a commercial product on our side, we would be more than happy to train teachers as facilitators and give them a free license to use the game as a teaching tool to all pupils / students in Switzerland. As we have already tested it as a Quick & Dirty version in a non-technical school, we know that the game is well appreciated by young audiences (and their teachers !).

Project Idea Metadata

Project Idea Name: PowerPlay : the educative workshop of the energy transition
Date: 2/6/2023 9:17:13 PM
Administrators:

Project Idea Description

We think knowledge is key to the energy transition ! And the best way we found to spread it is to make it appear fun and non-judgmental.

PowerPlay is a pedagogical workshop aiming to make various audiences (politicians, media, companies, local communities...) understand the challenges of the energy transition (decarbonization, efficiency, consumption, security of supply...) and acquire a grasp of the orders of magnitude. In groups, players decide on which electrical production units they want to invest with their own characteristics (deployment and operational costs, build time, summer / winter production, CO2...) and must do their best to provide the population with power all year long and until 2050.

The data from the cards are all based on the reference scientific reports (BFE, PSI, IEA...) to make sure the game is as realistic as possible, though remaining rather easy to grasp.

The goals are multifold : educate the general public to the subject, spread the sense of urgency to take strong decisions regarding energy savings / production in Switzerland, encourage transpartisan dialogue to find consensus and accelerate the transition...

The V1 of the workshop is currently being rolled out locally after months of tests & development. An energy-savvy facilitator is currently needed to clarify the rules, give more information on the many questions regarding energy, raise open questions to ensure dialogue, we do not imagine the game as a stand-alone as it would need to be oversimplified (thus not realistic anymore)...

We are happy with the result and the feedbacks so far are excellent, however we also see the limits of the products in its current form, especially the fact that the life of the product needs too much involvement (time & energy) from the two co-creators and their extensive knowledge of the field, the game mechanisms and the hypothesis / reports used to create the game.

We realize that we want to go towards a V2 with a small app accompanying the team helping us to :

update data
manage multiple languages (so far, we have only a french version and want to quickly add english and german without tripling the physical material necessary)
ease up the logistics of play so that participants can concentrate even more on debate and knowledge rather than moving tokens
manage more participants per facilitator (currently a maximum of 15, we could triple this with enhanced ergonomy)
deploy the game more quickly throughout the country, and not needing necessarily an energy specialist as facilitator
give additional information to the public if desired

We also want to integrate in a further stage the situation of our german & french neighbours, enabling various groups to interact through power trading between the 3 countries, making countries interdependency understandable.

If the full workshop will remain a commercial product on our side, we would be more than happy to train teachers as facilitators and give them a free license to use the game as a teaching tool to all pupils / students in Switzerland. As we have already tested it as a Quick & Dirty version in a non-technical school, we know that the game is well appreciated by young audiences (and their teachers !).