Archive of Topic: innovation

Gbemisola “Gbemi” Akinsipe

My inter­ests range from the inte­gra­tion of renew­ables into exist­ing grids,the pos­si­bil­ity of indi­genes (espe­cially women) in rural com­mu­ni­ties pro­duc­ing their own power or at least under­stand­ing its work­ings and the inter­ac­tion between sci­ence and pol­icy mak­ing in devel­op­ing coun­tries. I would love to study in the Renew­able & Appro­pri­ate Energy Lab­o­ra­tory (RAEL) or the Energy Mod­el­ing, Analy­sis and Con­trol Group (EMAC)

Jess Carney

Jess Car­ney is inter­ested in under­stand­ing how sus­tain­able energy inte­gra­tion impacts power grids and elec­tric­ity mar­kets. She received her under­grad­u­ate degree at Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­sity in 2018, where she majored in Envi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence and minored in Applied Math­e­mat­ics and Sta­tis­tics. She has held intern­ships at the Inde­pen­dent Sys­tem Oper­a­tor or New Eng­land (ISO-​​NE), study­ing envi­ron­men­tal pol­icy and its effect on car­bon emis­sions and energy prices, and at the Ver­mont Elec­tric Power Com­pany (VELCO), ana­lyz­ing the impact of high renew­able pen­e­tra­tion on sys­tem sta­bil­ity and inte­grat­ing state renew­able goals into trans­mis­sion plan­ning procedures.

She has wide-​​ranging inter­ests that include renew­able energy inte­gra­tion, grid sta­bil­ity, energy access, and energy lit­er­acy and education.

Nia Novella Jones

A recent grad­u­ate of North­east­ern Uni­ver­sity with a B.S. in Indus­trial Engi­neer­ing with minor in Law & Pub­lic Policy.

I intend to research the inter­sec­tion of renew­able energy tech­nol­ogy, edu­ca­tion, and specif­i­cally prison edu­ca­tion pro­grams focused on STEM. Ulti­mately, my goal is to work with for­mally incar­cer­ated cit­i­zens as they pre­pare for re-​​entry into soci­ety. I aspire to work with renew­able energy projects in Africa to ful­fill my goal as devel­op­ing into a World Class “Energy” Engineer.

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

Countercyclical energy and climate policy for the U.S.

Con­tin­u­a­tion of the U.S.’s his­tor­i­cal pat­tern address­ing energy prob­lems only in times of cri­sis is unlikely to cat­alyze a tran­si­tion to an energy sys­tem with fewer adverse social impacts. Instead, the U.S. needs to bol­ster sup­port for energy inno­va­tion when the per­ceived urgency of energy-​​related prob­lems appears to be reced­ing. Because of the lags involved in both the energy sys­tem and the climate sys­tem, decar­boniz­ing the econ­omy will require extra­ordinary per­sis­tence over decades. This need for sus­tained com­mit­ment is in con­trast to the last several decades, which have been marked by volatil­ity and cycles of boom and bust.  In con­trast to the often –repeated phrase that one should ‘never let a good cri­sis go to waste,’ the U.S. needs to most actively fos­ter energy inno­va­tion when aspects of energy and cli­mate prob­lems appear to be improv­ing. We describe the ratio­nale for a ‘coun­ter­cycli­cal’ approach to energy and cli­mate pol­icy, which involves pre-​​commitment t o a set of poli­cies that go into effect once a set of trigger con­di­tions are met.

Ponce de Leon, Diego

I am work­ing on my  MS/​PhD at the Energy and Resources Group (ERG). My research is in low-​​carbon (low-​​impact) energy sys­tems and eco­nomic devel­op­ment, mod­el­ing high renew­able energy future sce­nar­ios, and deploy­ing sMArt Grid (high-​​tech/​low-​​cost) pilots in the ris­ing south.  I’ve worked in Chi­a­pas (Mex­ico) devel­op­ing regional micro­cre­dit schemes and river sur­vey stud­ies,  designed and built ‘low-​​tech/​high– impact’ water dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tems for small com­mu­ni­ties in Uganda and Hon­duras, have used GIS mod­els and InVest (Inte­grated Val­u­a­tion of Envi­ron­men­tal ser­vices and Trade­offs) to study the hydrol­ogy of the Linthipe Basin (Malawi), and inves­ti­gated link­ages between hydro­log­i­cal vari­abil­ity, energy use, and agri­cul­ture in Pun­jab and Telan­gana (India).

My cur­rent work is in Nicaragua devel­op­ing and build­ing sce­nar­ios for the SWITCH model – opti­miz­ing the pen­e­tra­tion of renew­able energy into the country’s elec­tric power sys­tem, and deploy­ing the country’s first micro-​​scale demand response pro­gram (DR) through the use of ‘flex­i­ble energy toolkits’.

You can visit my web­site: dleonb​.com, LinkedIn, and Insta­gram accounts

 

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University of California
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Phone: (510) 642-1640
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Email: ergdeskb@berkeley.edu

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