Monday, July 28, 2014

CMU Student Research on biofuels, Navajo Energy projects, and Rural Microgrids in Developing Countries

CMU doctoral student Dan Posen won the best PhD presentation award at the Technology, Management & Policy (TMP) consortium hosted by TPP in Lisbon last month.  The presentation was titled, "Greenhouse Gas Mitigation Benefits of Expanding U.S. Biofuel Incentives to Promote Biomass Use in Chemical Feedstocks." 

CMU doctoral student Len Necefer will speak at the Navajo Nation Energy Summit in Arizona this week.  This is an annual briefing of elected officials and also department heads on the issue of energy resource development on the Navajo Nation. 

He will also present a webinar this September for the Tribal Energy Program, in cooperation with the DOE Office of Indian Energy and Western Area Power Administration (WAPA).  The series is intended for tribal leaders and staff who are interested in developing facility- and community-scale energy projects, responding to utilities' requests for proposals, and learning more about the competitive power market"  Necefer's will discuss collaborative, stakeholder-driven modeling, how the models developed have been and could be used, and how specifically this process and resulting models might be utilized in Indian Country.

A new economic model for rural microgrid implementation is being explored as CMU grad student Nathan Williams conducts his doctoral research on enabling the financial feasibility of rural microgrids in developing countries. Microgrids are small-scale electrical generation and distribution systems that deliver power in a small region near the power sources. Microgrids stand in stark contrast to typical macrogrid infrastructures, which transmit electricity over high-voltage transmission networks that connect very large power plants to load centers that can be hundreds or even thousands of kilometers from the generators.  

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