Energy Efficiency

Currently, the energy efficiency of my home is quite good. Thanks to the foresight of my parents many of the appliances we use are very energy efficient. Items like our washer and dryer machines and our water heater are able to work without concern. However, there is one item we have which has made an incredible difference in decreasing my household's energy bills.

Solar Panels. In combination with a selection of energy efficient habits my family's electricity bill are below zero thus eliminating that cost with a renewable energy source.

However, this does not mean there is no more that can be done. Solar panels may be a to completely subsidize the amount of electricity my household consumes but there is further that can be done as well as reducing my family's water usage. This can be done by first maintaining the infrastructure that has been already set into place then by adding additional items to further complement them.

• Maintain Solar Panels: By maintaining the solar panels my family can continue to produce our own energy.
• Maintain Water Heater: The water heater my family uses is smaller and more efficient than traditional water heaters. It is able to heat water quickly instead of needing to store already heated water.
• Turn Off Power Strips: Power strips cause extra energy to be wasted when they are plugged in and not in use. By turning them off when done or using start power strips that can shut themselves off extra energy can be prevented from being wasted.
• Install a Battery for Solar Panels: By connecting a battery to our solar panels my family would be able to use solar energy all of the time instead of relying on the grid for power during the night and during rain. With this our energy would be clean all of the time.
• Get an Electric Vehicle: By getting an electric vehicle a large amount of gas costs could instead be replaced with the clean, free energy already coming from the aforementioned solar panels.

• Use drought-tolerant/local plants: By using drought-tolerant plants less water would need to be used carrying for them.
• Redo the lawn with less water using plants: Also, by substituting grass with a better alternative more water can be saved.
• Use aerators on sinks: By reducing the flow of water with an aerator on sinks the amount of water used when they are on is lessened.
• Practice good showering water usage habits (5-8 minutes): By keeping good energy habits in mind more water can be saved by simply washing quicker.
• Eat less meat and processed foods: The amount of water used in meat and processed food is large and by eating less you can use less water and be healthier.

I currently live in the city of Camarillo, and average sized city of 70,741 population in Ventura County in California primarily focused on agriculture.

Here in this graph, it displays the energy usage of the different sectors of Camarillo in Terajoules. This is an average of one year worth of energy created from data collected over the last ten years.

Then this map displays the average household income for Ventura Country. The average for the main parts Camarillo is above the average household income for California. This data means that the energy use for Camarillo is likely higher because more residents have more disposable income.

Another piece of data to better understand Camarillo's energy usage is its population density. Camarillo is smaller and has a lower population density than most of the nearby cities. This means that Camarillo energy usage would be lower population wise.

For the Powerville High School there are likely a few parts where energy is used inefficiently. First, a majority of the lighting in the school could likely be easily replaced with more efficient LED lighting. Also, I would recommend looking into the energy efficiency of the school's HVAC system as it can be very energy intensive.

In this chart it shows an overview of all of the schools in the Powerville Unified School District. This means there are some similarities between it and the chart of the Powerville Highschool. Here, there is still more energy used in the summer so understanding how that can be reduced would be effective. Also, along with using more efficient lighting and better lighting habits is vital as lighting is most school's majority of their energy usage.

From what I learned in this internship and from my own personal preferences I would be interested in better understanding how the data of energy can be used to create more energy efficiency. An Energy Data Analyst or something similar is an interesting career in the energy field to me. Energy Data Analyst covers a large field of analyzing historical energy data, current energy data, making predictions about energy, and more. Spreadsheets, programing, and AI all can be used in Data Analytics which is primarily where my interest is.

A video reflection on this internship:

 https://drive.google.com/file/d/1TKzchlKkp0mgZ7h0h5CeBH5rhJglFble/view?usp=sharing