The purpose of this section of the assignment is to develop ability to create definitions, formulate concepts, and establish confident control of the course material. The most important criteria in this section is: using your own words. Do not try to take definitions from the lecture materials or from other sources and simply "cut and paste". That will be easy to recognize and will lead to penalization.You are encouraged to truly test your overall understanding of the concepts by formulating your own answers.
1. Write a "news type" article on energy storage. This should be written in a popular style, from the point of view of expert in the field, but for those less technical readers. Set all sources of information aside and use your own language. The length of the article should be 1⁄2 page to 1 page, so it should be a very brief report on the new technology or area of interest. Do not read any similar articles dealing with energy storage as that may influence your judgment and sway your approach as well as inadvertently cause you to plagiarize someone else's words. Don't worry about the grade, this is opportunity to be creative, to test your ability to write short pieces about renewable energy, and simply be creative. The article should introduce the concept of energy storage, mention advantages, and future directions, among other things that you will think of.
2. Describe in 5 - 8 sentences the applications of energy storage. USE YOUR OWN WORDS!. Involve in your discussion applications beyond bulk storage applications described in lecture slides. Recall remarks from the lecture that bulk energy storage may be the driving force for advancing energy storage technologies, but it is not the only applications area. Use "fresh look" and discuss what in your opinion will be direction towards energy storage applications will move in the future. Imagine yourself in the position of a company executive in charge of new developments and a new development is introduction of energy storage, so your main task is to come up with innovative applications that would be revolutionary and improve company's "bottom line". Your approach doesn't need to be fully developed or justified, but it has to include novelty and forward thinking. In other words, do not worry about sounding nai¨ve, incompetent or unrealistic, it is more important to demonstrate the overall view of the energy industry and creativity.
3. Define in 5-8 sentences the field of batteries, preferably, but not exclusively related to energy storage (in the context discussed in the class). Discuss only those battery types that have been covered in the lecture. Try to summarize the description using a fresh angle, a property or function of batteries in the energy storage landscape that was not mentioned in the class. Or, discuss a strength or weakness of a battery technology in form of a "position article", i.e., state the observation or point of view. Use technical language and terminology as much as possible and preferably use the "hard data", not soft statements. Test your knowledge of batteries by prosing a new type of battery.
4. Define in 5-8 sentences the fuel cell technology. Set all sources of information aside and use your knowledge at this point to write a mini-article. Think about clarity for this, often misunderstood topic, as if you were presenting it to a class that you are teaching. What is the most ambiguous or least clear part of the technology? How would you propose to explain it better? Test your knowledge and creativity by proposing an improvement for fuel cells, either in the design, materials or the fuels used. It is important to show readiness to do multi-angled approach and evaluation; and to connect knowledge of different subjects. Most ofyou are not very familiar with fuel cells and that's a valuable position as you can look at things from unbiased perspective. Discussion and ability to pull multiple concepts into consideration is more important than the final outcome.