Hi, welcome back to another blog post! This is the second part of my capstone project, a school research project. If you haven’t read my first capstone blog post, you should read that now. I hope you enjoy it! Make sure to be ready for my 2 following blog posts.

Currently, I am done researching and have completed an interview. I will have 1-3 more interviews, likely 2 or 3 included the one that I have done. I got a lot of good information from my interviews as I learned entirely new things, & learned new things about a topic that I already knew about. I am in the middle of writing my script for the Ted talk that I will present. Getting and conducting m interview was much easier than I expected. I thought it would be very hard when it actually is pretty straightforward. I am thinking that the hardest part will probably be presenting the actual Ted talk and memorizing it because mine will probably be at least 5 minutes. Finding who I was going to interview, or 5-6 potential people took about 5 hours. Writing the questions took about 1 hour for 4 interviews. About 15 minutes for each one. I had 15 questions for each person. Here are some of the questions I sent to somebody who works in hydroelectricity:

1.     What are some of the pros and cons of hydroelectric energy/other renewable sources?

2.     Are there any recent technological advances in hydroelectricity?

3.     How does the cost of hydro energy compare to natural gas, solar, and wind energy?  

4.     How does storage of hydroelectricity work?

5.     Why is the growth of hydroelectricity slowing down? Are there any new dams/hydroelectricity power plants being built in the U.S.?

6.     What are some things we can do to increase the use of hydroelectricity?

7.     What are some of the biggest challenges in increasing renewable & hydro energy in the U.S?

8.     Are there any significant negative impacts of building hydroelectricity plants?

9.     Is there anything else that you think I should know about hydroelectricity/renewable energy?

10.   Is it possible for me to come for a site visit to see how the process works and what it entails?

Conducting the interview was fun, I did mine on zoom. I took notes while he was saying the answers to my question. His answers were very good and detailed so it was very easy to incorporate into my presentation. It was frustrating because, for some people, it took a long time for the interviewees to respond. Also, sometimes g-mail sent me an email back giving a warning so it didn’t go through. I also have to figure something out because I have two responses for the same time! It shouldn’t be too hard to figure out though.

Overall, I enjoyed the process of conducting my interview as it was very useful. Stay tuned for my following blog posts. My last and most exciting post will be before the end of June.