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.