The Smart Grid, A Scale Demonstration Model Incorporating Electrified Vehicles

This article was published in the Spring 2011 issue of the Journal of Undergraduate Researc

Promoting novelty, rigor, and style in energy social science: towards codes of practice for appropriate methods and research design

A series of weaknesses in creativity, research design, and quality of writing continue to handicap energy social science. Many studies ask uninteresting research questions, make only marginal contributions, and lack innovative methods or application to theory. Many studies also have no explicit research design, lack rigor, or suffer from mangled structure and poor quality of writing. To help remedy these shortcomings, this Review offers suggestions for how to construct research questions; thoughtfully engage with concepts; state objectives; and appropriately select research methods. Then, the Review offers suggestions for enhancing theoretical, methodological, and empirical novelty. In terms of rigor, codes of practice are presented across seven method categories: experiments, literature reviews, data collection, data analysis, quantitative energy modeling, qualitative analysis, and case studies. We also recommend that researchers beware of hierarchies of evidence utilized in some disciplines, and that researchers place more emphasis on balance and appropriateness in research design. In terms of style, we offer tips regarding macro and microstructure and analysis, as well as coherent writing. Our hope is that this Review will inspire more interesting, robust, multi-method, comparative, interdisciplinary and impactful research that will accelerate the contribution that energy social science can make to both theory and practice

Development of a Decision Aid for Energy Resource Management for the Navajo Nation Incorporating Environmental Cultural Values

<p>Decision-making surrounding pathways of future energy resource management are complexity and requires balancing tradeoffs of multiple environmental, social, economic, and technical outcomes. Technical decision aid can provide a framework for informed decision making, allowing individuals to better understand the tradeoff between resources, technology, energy services, and prices. While technical decision aid have made significant advances in evaluating these quantitative aspects of energy planning and performance, they have not been designed to incorporate human factors, such as preferences and behavior that are informed by cultural values. Incorporating cultural values into decision tools can provide not only an improved decision framework for the Navajo Nation, but also generate new insights on how these perspective can improve decision making on energy resources. Ensuring these aids are a cultural fit for each context has the potential to increase trust and promote understanding of the tradeoffs involved in energy resource management. In this dissertation I present the development of a technical tool that explicitly addresses cultural and spiritual values and experimentally assesses their influence on the preferences and decision making of Navajo citizens. Chapter 2 describes the results of a public elicitation effort to gather information about stakeholder views and concerns related to energy development in the Navajo Nation in order to develop a larger sample survey and a decision-support tool that links techno-economic energy models with sociocultural attributes. Chapter 3 details the methods of developing the energy decision aid and its underlying assumptions for alternative energy projects and their impacts. This tool also provides an alternative to economic valuation of cultural impacts based upon an ordinal index tied to environmental impacts. Chapter 4 details the the influence of various cultural, environmental, and economic outcome information provided through the developed decision aid on beliefs and preferences related to the type and scale of energy development, trust of decision makers, and larger concern for environmental protection. Finally, chapter 5 presents concluding thoughts future research and on how technical-social decision tools can provide a means ensuring effective decision making on the Navajo Nation and other American Indian communities.</p