Annelise Gill-Wiehl

At ERG Annelise has con­tin­ued the study of com­mu­ni­ty ener­gy solu­tions, with both cook­ing and com­mu­ni­ty exten­sion ser­vices focal areas for her ana­lyt­ic and field studies.

Annelise Gill-Wiehl stud­ied envi­ron­men­tal engi­neer­ing and inter­na­tion­al devel­op­ment stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame.  There, she worked with the Keough School of Glob­al Affairs’ Asso­ciate Dean for Pol­i­cy and Prac­tice, Sara Siev­ers, through the Kel­logg Inter­na­tion­al Schol­ars Pro­gram. They inves­ti­gat­ed how to incor­po­rate the pref­er­en­tial option for the poor into pol­i­cy. Gill-Wiehl’s own research inves­ti­gates ener­gy infra­struc­ture and the bar­ri­ers to tech­nol­o­gy adop­tion. Gill-Wiehl and Pro­fes­sor Siev­ers pilot­ed a Com­mu­ni­ty Tech­nol­o­gy Pro­gram in Shi­rati, Tan­za­nia through a Kel­logg Research Grant.

While an under­grad­u­ate she interned for the Foun­da­tion of Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment in Masa­ka, Ugan­da. Addi­tion­al­ly, Gill-Wiehl con­duct­ed rough­ly 200 house­hold ener­gy sur­veys through an Expe­ri­enc­ing the World Fel­low­ship to inves­ti­gate ener­gy infra­struc­ture in Shi­rati. Her research inter­ests are at the inter­sec­tion of engi­neer­ing and pol­i­cy in the East African con­text. She hopes to pur­sue a PhD to fur­ther inves­ti­gate these issues.

The­sis Title: Pilot of Com­mu­ni­ty Tech­nol­o­gy Work­ers in Shi­rati, Tanzania

Ziming Ma

Castellanos, Sergio

Ser­gio Castel­lanos is a Berke­ley Ener­gy & Cli­mate Insti­tute – Tec­nológi­co de Mon­ter­rey (BECI–ITESM) Ener­gy Fel­low work­ing at the Renew­able and Appro­pri­ate Ener­gy Lab with Prof. Dan Kam­men. His research focus­es on expand­ing an opti­miza­tion mod­el –SWITCH– to Mex­i­co to deter­mine the opti­mal invest­ments in new gen­er­a­tion and trans­mis­sion assets. Through his research, he also ana­lyzes the man­u­fac­tur­ing capac­i­ty of pho­to­volta­ic solar tech­nolo­gies in Mex­i­co. Pre­vi­ous­ly, in his Ph.D. stud­ies (Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing ’15, MIT) he char­ac­ter­ized the elec­tri­cal impact of struc­tur­al defects in sil­i­con-based solar cells. He enjoys read­ing, explor­ing new hob­bies, and learn­ing more about the inter­sec­tion of tech­nol­o­gy, busi­ness, and pol­i­cy in renew­able energy.

Cur­rent posi­tion:

Assis­tant Pro­fes­sor of Civ­il, Archi­tec­tur­al and Envi­ron­men­tal Engi­neer­ing, Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas, Austin

Strategic siting and regional grid interconnections key to low-carbon futures in African countries

Recent fore­casts sug­gest that African coun­tries must triple their cur­rent elec­tric­i­ty gen­er­a­tion by 2030. Our mul­ti­cri­te­ria assess­ment of wind and solar poten­tial for large regions of Africa shows how eco­nom­i­cal­ly com­pet­i­tive and low-environmental–impact renew­able resources can sig­nif­i­cant­ly con­tribute to meet­ing this demand. We cre­at­ed the Mul­ti­cri­te­ria Analy­sis for Plan­ning Renew­able Ener­gy (MapRE) frame­work to map and char­ac­ter­ize solar and wind ener­gy zones in 21 coun­tries in the South­ern African Pow­er Pool (SAPP) and the East­ern Africa Pow­er Pool (EAPP) and find that poten­tial is sev­er­al times greater than demand in many coun­tries. Sig­nif­i­cant frac­tions of demand can be quick­ly served with “no-regrets” options—or zones that are low-cost, low-envi­ron­men­tal impact, and high­ly acces­si­ble. Because no-regrets options are spa­tial­ly het­ero­ge­neous, inter­na­tion­al inter­con­nec­tions are nec­es­sary to help achieve low-car­bon devel­op­ment for the region as a whole, and inter­con­nec­tions that sup­port the best renew­able options may dif­fer from those planned for hydropow­er expan­sion. Addi­tion­al­ly, inter­con­nec­tions and select­ing wind sites to match demand reduce the need for SAPP-wide con­ven­tion­al gen­er­a­tion capac­i­ty by 9.5% in a high-wind sce­nario, result­ing in a 6–20% cost sav­ings, depend­ing on the avoid­ed con­ven­tion­al tech­nol­o­gy. Strate­gic selec­tion of low-impact and acces­si­ble zones is more cost effec­tive with inter­con­nec­tions com­pared with solu­tions with­out inter­con­nec­tions. Over­all results are robust to mul­ti­ple load growth sce­nar­ios. Togeth­er, results show that mul­ti­cri­te­ria site selec­tion and delib­er­ate plan­ning of inter­con­nec­tions may sig­nif­i­cant­ly increase the eco­nom­ic and envi­ron­men­tal com­pet­i­tive­ness of renew­able alter­na­tives rel­a­tive to con­ven­tion­al generation.

Hildalgo-Gonzalez, Patricia

Patri­cia grad­u­ated as an indus­trial and elec­tri­cal engi­neer in 2012 from Pon­ti­f­i­cia Uni­ver­si­dad Católi­ca de Chile (PUC). Dur­ing her under­grad­u­ate stud­ies she worked as a Lin­ear Alge­bra teach­ing assis­tant for three years, per­formed research in Dr. Daniel Kammen’s Renew­able and Appro­pri­ate Ener­gy Lab­o­ra­tory (RAEL) at UC Berke­ley work­ing on the SWITCH mod­el for the US. She also worked (fund­ed by CONICYT) on solar ener­gy research at the Uni­ver­sity of Ari­zona (under­grad the­sis). Once she grad­u­ated she worked as a Lin­ear Alge­bra lec­turer at PUC. Lat­er on, for over a year and a half she worked as a research assis­tant at UC Berke­ley and at the Nat­ural Resources Defense Coun­cil (per­form­ing SWITCH-Chile research). Her top­ics of inter­est are how to high­ly inte­grate renew­able ener­gy in the grid, long-term pow­er sys­tem plan­ning, sto­chas­tic load dis­patch mod­els, ener­gy pol­icy, and ener­gy economics.

Shirley, Rebekah

Rebekah Shirley is ERG alum­ni and for­mer Post-Doc­tor­al Researcher at RAEL. She com­plet­ed her doc­tor­al stud­ies in the Ener­gy and Resources Group in 2015. She also pre­vi­ous­ly obtained a MSc. Ener­gy and Resources (2011) and a MSc. Civ­il Engi­neer­ing at UC Berke­ley (2011). Her doc­tor­al research focused on decen­tral­ized renew­able ener­gy tech­nolo­gies and design­ing inte­grat­ed mod­el­ing frame­works to sup­port ener­gy plan­ning in emerg­ing economies, with a focus on South­east Asia and island regions and now her scope has extend­ed to sub-Saha­ran Africa, where she lives.

As a researcher at RAEL Rebekah has con­duct­ed fea­si­bil­i­ty stud­ies for ener­gy alter­na­tives in Bor­neo and Laos, built the first car­bon emis­sions and green jobs impact cal­cu­la­tors in the Caribbean, devel­oped solu­tions to reduce the car­bon and water foot­prints of the hotel sec­tor in India, designed car­bon neu­tral emer­gency hous­ing for hur­ri­cane pre­pared­ness and cli­mate resilience in French Poly­ne­sia, explored the agri­cul­ture-water inter­sec­tion with Ful­bright Nexus Schol­ars in Nicaragua, and mod­eled least-cost pow­er sys­tems for part­ners across Latin Amer­i­ca, South­east Asia and the Pacif­ic. She has worked with insti­tu­tions like the Nation­al Renew­able Ener­gy Lab­o­ra­to­ry (NREL), the U.S. Depart­ment of Ener­gy (DOE) and USAID. Rebekah is a Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia Chancellor’s Fel­low and at UC Berke­ley has won grants from orga­ni­za­tions such as the DOE and the Rain­for­est Foun­da­tion that sup­port her work.

Rebekah is now the Chief Research Offi­cer at Pow­er For All, a glob­al edu­ca­tion and advo­ca­cy ini­tia­tive found­ed by ener­gy access prac­ti­tion­ers to advance renew­able solu­tions for uni­ver­sal ener­gy access, with focused cam­paigns in sub-Saha­ran Africa. For her work in build­ing the con­ti­nen­t’s first decen­tral­ized ener­gy research engine Rebekah was named Africa’s Out­stand­ing Young Leader in Ener­gy 2018. Rebekah now lives and works in Nairo­bi, Kenya.

Kittner, Noah

Noah Kit­tner is now a Pro­fes­sor in both City and Region­al Plan­ning, and Glob­al Pub­lic Health at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na, Chapel Hill.

Noah Kit­tner was a PhD stu­dent in the Ener­gy and Resources Group at UC Berke­ley and researcher in the Renew­able and Appro­pri­ate Ener­gy Lab­o­ra­to­ry. After grad­u­at­ing with a BS in Envi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence from UNC-Chapel Hill (high­est hon­ors), Noah was a Ful­bright Fel­low at the Joint Grad­u­ate School for Ener­gy and Envi­ron­ment in Bangkok, Thai­land research­ing tech­ni­cal and pol­i­cy aspects of solar elec­tric­i­ty and sus­tain­abil­i­ty assess­ment. Recent­ly, he co-authored a Thai Solar PV Roadmap with col­leagues at Chu­la­longko­rn University.

He has worked on renew­able ener­gy issues in a vari­ety of con­texts, includ­ing mea­sur­ing land use change and bio­mass fuel uses in west­ern Ugan­da, installing solar pan­els in Mex­i­co, and elec­tric­i­ty grid mod­el­ing in Koso­vo. He is sup­port­ed through the Berke­ley Cen­ter for Green Chem­istry as a SAGE-IGERT fel­low, Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion as a Grad­u­ate Research Fel­low, USAID, and has won an award from the Nation­al Go Solar Foun­da­tion for his work on solar photovoltaics.