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

Alstone, Peter

Peter’s research focus areas are infor­ma­tion tech­nol­ogy approach­es to ener­gy devel­op­ment, under­stand­ing mar­kets for demand-side ener­gy tech­nol­ogy, and ener­gy tech­nol­ogy pol­icy. Out­side of aca­d­e­mics, he con­tributes to the Light­ing Glob­al pro­gram, which sup­ports the mar­ket for mod­ern off-grid light­ing in the devel­op­ing world. Peter’s work for Light­ing Glob­al includes tech­ni­cal and engi­neer­ing sup­port, pol­icy devel­op­ment, and mar­ket intel­li­gence. To escape the city he enjoys hikes in Tilden Park and far­ther afield, par­tic­u­larly with his two kids and wife Andrea. Peter holds a B.S. in Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing (North Car­olina State Uni­ver­sity) and M.S. in Envi­ron­men­tal Sys­tems (Hum­boldt State University).