Where Renewables / Electric Vehicles and the Electric Grid Meet

The intersection of renewable energy, electric vehicles, and the electric grid was the topic of conversation yesterday at a press conference here at UC San Diego.  Read the press release on the Jacobs School news site.

Solar Concentrator from Jacobs School Featured in Optics & Photonics News

An electrical engineering project to develop better solar concentrators landed on the cover of Optics & Photonics News, published by OSA.

Read the Optics & Photonics News story by Valerie C. Coffey here.

This project, from electrical engineering professor Joseph Ford's Photonic Systems Integration Laboratory here in the Jacobs School of Engineering.

This research project won the best poster at the Jacobs School's Research Expo 2010.

UCSD Engineers Give Solar Power a Boost

The growing popularity of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems across the United States has made it more important to maximize their power input. That’s why UC San Diego environmental engineering professor Jan Kleissl is working on technologies and methods that will better predict how much power we can actually harness from the sun.

In a paper recently published in the journal Renewable Energy, “Optimum fixed orientations and benefits of tracking for capturing solar radiation in the continental United States,” Kleissl and his Ph.D. student Matt Lave explain why it’s important to strategize on solar installation, depending upon the location of the building relative to the sun. For example, Kleissl and his students at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering have improved the solar map for the state of California, which allows homeowners, photovoltaic installers and utilities to better predict how much energy they will get out of their solar systems.  The map can be viewed via Google Earth for free. 

UCSD Environmental Engineering professor Jan Kleissl

“Probably the most important result of this work for California is that in all coastal areas (Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego) it is advantageous to install the panels facing about 10-degrees west of south,” Kleissl said. “This not only optimizes energy production, but it also improves the correlation of solar power production with the load. Panels facing southwest ‘see’ the sun longer and at a better angle than panels facing south, which means that the energy generated is larger during the peak demand hours (3-to-5p.m.), making the energy more valuable. The generally clear conditions during the annual load peaks (also known as Santa Anas to Southern Californians) mean that the solar panels produce at the optimum power. On the other hand, wholesale energy prices during the peak time may be 10 times those during other days. In a future with more variable electricity rates this margin may tip the balance of economics in favor of solar energy and there will be greater incentives for installing panels facing southwest. Our maps show that there are already benefits of doing so now as the energy generation increases.”

Kleissl further explains his intensive solar research at UC San Diego in this recent video produced by SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics.

Other related Kleissl links:

http://maeresearch.ucsd.edu/kleissl/

http://solar.ucsd.edu/

http://solar.ucsd.edu/education

Engineers Help Power Solar Use by ‘Mapping’ the Sun

Engineering Students Help San Diego Region Secure $154 Million in Solar Bonds

UC San Diego and Sanyo Pioneer Next Generation of Energy Management

SPIE Video of Kleissl’s Solar Research

Video from Thursday's Sanyo / UC San Diego Announcement

Below is video and audio from Jan Kleissl's talk at the Sanyo-UC San Diego smart grid / solar / energy management announcement on Thursday. The video is of the UC San Diego sky imager from Jan Kleissl's lab in the MAE Dept here at the Jacobs School.



The San Diego Union Tribune and KPBS and many other news outlets covered this story.

Solar Concentrator Video has approx 1,600 views in 6 days

1600 views for the solar concentrator video...not bad for a technial video...have YOU seen it yet?




I'm not sure where the traffic came from...according to YouTube insight, most of the views have no direct referrer link...meaning that the video spread virally.

Solar Concentrator Video on YouTube

Jason Karp and his solar concentrator have made their way to YouTube. (Today YouTube, tomoroww???)


Want more? Read the academic paper here: http://psilab.ucsd.edu/publications.html

By the way, this is Joseph Ford's lab at the Jacobs School...birthplace of "origami optics"...and the inventor of origami optics, Jason Tremblay earned his PhD and is a postdoc in the Ford lab.

Caption: Electrical engineering Ph.D. student Jason Karp won the 2010 Rudee Research Expo Outstanding Poster Award. His winning poster: “Planar Micro-Optic Solar Concentration”.

photo credit (above): UC San Diego / Erik Jepsen

Caption: The new solar concentrator design (right) from UC San Diego collects sunlight with thousands of small lenses imprinted on a common sheet. All these lenses couple into a flat “waveguide” which funnels light to a single photovoltaic cell. Older system designs (left) require many photovoltaic cells which each need to be aligned and electrically connected.

Solar Concentrator Video

Above is a video of Jason Karp talking about the technology that won him top prize at Research Expo 2010.

Check out the list of departmental winners and honorable mentions here.

I'm excited to see what happens with this technology...which Karp et al published earlier this year in Optics Express. (Check out the PDF here).

Update (2:55 pm on April 20): the "post event" site for Research Expo 2010 is live.

Congrats to Jason Karp: Research Expo Grand Prize Winner

Congratulations to Jason Karp, the electrical engineering PhD student who won the top prize at Research Expo 2010.

His Project: a New Solar Concentrator Design

A new solar concentrator designed by electrical engineering Ph.D. student Jason Karp cuts the number of required photovoltaic cells and could lead to less expensive and more environmentally friendly solar installations. Existing high-efficiency solar cells incorporate optics to focus the sun hundreds of times and can deliver twice the power of rigid solar panels. But these systems typically use arrays of individual lenses that focus directly onto independent photovoltaic cells which all need to be aligned and electrically connected. In contrast, the new solar concentrator collects sunlight with thousands of small lenses imprinted on a common sheet. All these lenses couple into a flat “waveguide” which funnels light to a single photovoltaic cell. The engineers from the Photonic Systems Integration Laboratory led by electrical engineering professor Joseph Ford built a working prototype with just two primary optical components, thus reducing materials, alignment and assembly. This solar concentrator is compatible with high-volume, low-cost manufacturing.

Solar Story in the Union Tribune

Onell Soto from the San Diego Union Tribune covered the new UCSD solar story about the new MAE project to predict electric ouput from solar installations based on cloud cover.

Read the UT story here.

Read the UCSD story here.

A few sentences from the UT story is below:

Unexpected dips and spikes are difficult to deal with. For example, say all the solar-power systems in a neighborhood get shaded. Somewhere, a power plant has to kick out more juice. Transmission lines have to carry more power.

These things can be done smoothly, imperceptibly even, but it takes planning. That’s where Jan Kleissl’s sky-tracker comes in. The UCSD professor’s camera takes a picture every 30 seconds of a 25-square-mile circle of sky surrounding the university.

Kleissl plans to use $550,000 collected from California electricity customers — along with $137,000 from other sources — to, among other things, build a computer model for predicting where clouds will be up to three hours into the future.

When Solar Meets Shade

Large-scale integration of solar into the power grid will requrire solutions to the complications that arise when clouds pass over solar panels and trigger transint drops in generated electricity.

Environmental engineering professor Jan Kleissl from the MAE Department at the Jacobs School recently won an approximately $500,000 grant to address related issues. In particular, he is working on models for predicting when these cloud-triggered power drops will occur.

“Once a cloud arrives, the power output from our photovoltaic panels can decrease 40 to 80 percent within a few seconds, and when the cloud leaves the power output increases just as dramatically,” said Kleissl. “Utilities and operators of large power plants want to be able to predict the timing of these transitions so that they can charge up energy storage systems in advance to ‘smooth’ the clear-cloudy transition or prepare other generation to make up for the lost solar power.”

Read all about the new grant, the new project, and a wealth of background information in the story "How to Manage California’s Alternative Energy Grid When the Sun Doesn’t Shine" by Rex Graham, linked from the UC San Diego sustainability Web site.

Update: An LA Times story today highlights this work: "State regulators approve $9 million in solar research grants, PG&E solar contract"

Solar Video: Grad Students Help San Diego Get $154M in Bonds to Install Solar

Watch a video interview with Jan Kleissl and Michael Gollner and Karl Olney, two of the key Jacobs School grad students who helped San Diego get more than $154 M in bonds for installing solar in San Diego.







Update: Weds Nov 4

This story is now one of the rotating news stories on http://ucsd.edu/ Check out the screen shot below.

Jacobs School Grad Students Helped San Diego Region Win $154.6 Million in Bonds to Install Solar Panels

Under the guidance of environmental engineering professor Jan Kleissl, a group of Jacobs School graduate students, including Michael Gollner (bottom photo) and Karl Olney (middle photo) helped schools and other San Diego public institutions win more than $154 M in bonds for installing rooftop solar. (Prof. Kleissl is in the shades in the top photo with Gollner and Olney.)

The San Diego Union Tribune's Onell Soto covered this story. Reach Soto's story here:

http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/oct/30/county-wins-big-share-solar-funds/?business&zIndex=191768

The first sentence of the Union Tribune story:

San Diego County has snagged 20 percent of $800 million in federal stimulus-backed financing for government solar projects nationwide, thanks to a team effort by city officials, school leaders, engineers and college students.

Stay tuned for video from the three guys in the photos above.

UPDATE NOV 2:

The video is embedded below, via both YouTube and the Jacobs School video portal.