Master of Science In Energy Management postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

Every morning at seven, before my shift, I photograph the prepaid electricity meter at my parents' dairy kiosk in Kikuyu. I started doing it to settle a disagreement about whether the new chest freezer was worth the cost, and I have kept doing it for fourteen months because the numbers turned out to be more interesting than the argument. Consumption rises sharply on days when the door is opened often in the afternoon heat, and a simple change in when we restock has made a visible difference. That small record is a fair summary of why I want to study energy management: I am drawn less to generating power than to understanding where it goes and how decisions about its use are made.

I graduated with a BSc in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Second Class Upper. My strongest courses were power systems, electrical machines and measurement and instrumentation. For my final-year project I installed clamp-on current loggers on the distribution board of one student hostel block for six weeks and compared the load profile with the occupancy patterns reported by the warden. The clearest finding was ordinary but useful: corridor and washroom lighting ran continuously, and electric water heating made up a large share of evening peak demand. I estimated savings from motion sensors and timed heating, but my supervisor rightly pushed me to separate what I had measured from what I had assumed about student behaviour. Writing that limitations section taught me more about honest analysis than the calculations did.

Since graduating I have worked as a technician for a company that supplies and installs solar water heaters for homes, schools and a few small guesthouses. My work is practical: site surveys, roof mounting, plumbing connections, commissioning and follow-up visits. I am not responsible for pricing or design decisions, but on surveys I record hot water use, roof orientation and existing heater ratings, and I have seen how often a technically sound system fails to deliver because it is oversized, poorly maintained or misunderstood by the owner. One guesthouse manager kept the electric backup element switched on permanently, which defeated much of the purpose. Explaining a timer to her took ten minutes. Persuading the company to include a one-page operating guide with every installation took longer, but it is now standard.

These experiences have left me with questions I cannot answer from an engineering degree alone. How should a small business judge the payback on efficiency measures when its cash flow is uncertain? How do tariff structures and Kenya's energy regulations shape what households actually choose? How can an energy audit be designed so that its recommendations are adopted rather than filed away? I want postgraduate study to give me rigorous grounding in energy auditing, economics and policy, alongside the project and data analysis skills to evaluate interventions properly. I have begun reading on demand-side management and have worked through introductory material on life-cycle costing, which made me realise how much of my project's savings estimate ignored maintenance and replacement costs.

Outside work I play volleyball with a community team on Saturdays and keep the kiosk's monthly accounts, a job I took over when my mother wanted more time with suppliers. Neither is connected to energy in any grand way, though reconciling the books has made me comfortable with careful, routine record-keeping, which matters in any audit.

In the longer term I would like to work as an energy auditor or efficiency adviser for commercial and institutional buildings, particularly schools and small enterprises that lack in-house expertise. I bring a solid technical foundation, field experience of installations as they actually perform, and a habit of measuring before assuming. I am ready to build the analytical and managerial knowledge to turn those strengths into sound advice.