Reflection
Initially because my topic did not carry as much relevance to my senior project topic I did not find it to be very interesting. I was merely attempting to find something that was remotely related to my senior project which had more of a justice related topic. I had the vague concept of finding some topic with in big coal industry and its capitalist control of the power grid. After further research I found that it would be better to research and apply my justice concepts to a local issue with in our own coal dependent power grid. With this intent I ended writing mostly about the closure of the Navajo Generating Station in December of 2019. Despite how this topic did not line up very well with my Senior Project I still learned a lot about how power grids work in the United States. The subject of the Navajo Generating Station and local large coal power plants has come up in several conversations with people before, I just never had the proper knowledge on the subject to contribute with an informed perspective. This topic has helped me take a more firm view on the subject and will help inform me when I am planning my senior action project. My topic for my Senior project is more centered around more localized storage of energy however learning about our current system is very valuable to find how energy localized storage will interact with the power grid. During this project I wanted to use more scientific research to complete my project. However, I found that in order to get a more humanistic perspective on the justice of the topic I was researching I needed to pull my research from less scientific sources. The new found skill to find meaningful perspectives in the renewable energy sector that are not a one sided fact based argument will play an integral part in my renewable energy based senior project. I think that this assignment has given me a new perspective on our local grid and will help to inform me in my decision for my making an impact portion of my senior project in the community. I think that to improve this project in the future, I needed to have focused on a border range of power generation and power grid types. Researching the other grid system types such as the more renewable Germanic country grids would help me apply this research from this project to my senior project. Overall this project has helped me learn more valuable research skills as well as certain argumentation skills that will be necessary for my senior project thesis.