By Dave DeWitte
CEDAR RAPIDS -- Electricity consumers lived out a daily contradiction, at least until California's energy meltdown.
Everyone used electricity, but nobody knew much about it. Where did it come from? How did it get to them? And would they always be able to get it at an affordable price without damaging the environment in a increasingly deregulated industry?
A computer simulation game that will make its Iowa debut in Dubuque on Monday may offer some answers. The simulation will be at Kirkwood Community College on Jan. 30.
Seven meetings in a series called "Powering Iowa" will feature the Energy ED simulator developed last year for a civic journalism project in Wisconsin.
After California "we wanted a way for people to get their hands around the problem and help them understand the implications of all the choices involved," said Deborah Still, president of Blue Spark Gadgets, which owns the simulator.
Energy ED was developed for We The People/Wisconsin at the University of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering. The simulator allowed them to model various effects on their state's energy future.
Energy ED debuted last September to a statewide conference in Wisconsin that attracted 350 participants. After the conference, the product's developers were asked by Wisconsin-based Alliant Energy to customize the simulator to model the energy future of Iowa.
Developer Paul Meier updated the simulator's data base with electrical energy consumption, generation and transmission figures for Iowa. Those attending the two-hour Powering Iowa meetings will make choices about Iowa's energy future to see how they might play out over 15 years.
Variables allow participants to:
Estimate future Iowa demand for electricity.
Set goals for controlling harmful emissions.
Ensure energy reliability.
Estimate how much residential users will be willing to pay to accomplish their objectives.
Alliant Energy, which is sponsoring Powering Iowa, hopes ordinary consumers will take enough of an interest to attend the workshops.
"This is a brand new venture not only for Alliant, but for the country," said Lisha Coffey, an Alliant spokeswoman. She said educating consumers is "the sole main purpose of it."
"It's interactive and eye-opening," Coffey said.
Blue Spark Gadgets, a company formed to commercialize the Energy ED software, quickly realized its product was unique in the United States. It plans to have data Energy ED programmed by next spring for all 50 states.
