Define the Drought

The first rung of the ladder — choose a threshold, a duration and a scope, then defend the periods your definition admits and the ones it discards.

Stage 1 of 4 · Weeks 1–2

Due

21 August 2026

Weight

15% of the course

Takes as input

Nothing — this is the first stage

Produces

an operative definition of the event

What you are producing#

An operative definition of a renewable-energy drought for a system you specify. Not an essay about droughts — a test. Someone else must be able to take your definition, apply it to a generation trace, and get the same answer you did.

How the canonical definition constrains this#

The course ships one at the event: 12% of combined installed capacity, a 48-hour span, a 3-hour recovery allowance, wind and solar, winter half-year. That is your starting point and your target. You are asked to move at least one parameter and defend the move.

You are not asked to agree with it. You are asked to do better, for a system you have named, and to show your working.

What this feeds#

Everything. Site Against Failure tests a portfolio against your event, not the course’s. If your definition admits no events, you will have nothing to site against — which is itself a finding, and one you should discover here rather than in week 8.

What counts as a defensible answer#

A boundary with consequences you can state. “I chose 15% because it admits the three periods in my trace where the system would actually have needed help, and excludes the eleven where it would not” is an argument. “I chose 15% because it seemed reasonable” is not.

The strongest submissions say what their definition is blind to.