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- Saturday, April 21 - The Energy Institute will be set up at Earth Day Fort Collins! there will be workshops, live music, speakers, local food vendors, and a beer garden! RSVP to the Facebook event here.
- Tuesday, April 24 - Join us for a technical talk on "Beyond Gas Chromatography: Using 1H Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy for High-accuracy Analysis of Gas-phase Mixtures of Fuels and Refrigerants" presented by Jason A. Widegren, Ph.D., Research Chemist and NMR Facility Manager for the NIST. This event will be held at the Powerhouse Energy Campus in Classroom 104 at 4 pm. Click here to view the Facebook event.
- Thursday, April 26 - Friday, April 27 - CSU hosts the Inaugural "Water in the West Symposium" in Denver. Discussions at the event will center around water research and innovation, state and regional water policy, and future educational programming for the Water Resources Center, slated to break ground in 2019, which will be the first facility as part of the re-imagined National Western Center. Learn more and register here.
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Love Your State Day of Giving is Tomorrow!
The Love Your State Day of Giving takes place tomorrow on Thursday, April 19th and is an inspiring 24-hour event for alumni, students, faculty, staff, and friends to come together and support Colorado State University. Rams can give back and pay forward in support of their favorite cause (ehm the CSU Energy Institute!).
To celebrate Love Your State Day, we've created a fun video that showcases the work we do here at the Energy Institute. Check it out on YouTube here.
When Rams come together, great things happen. The collective impact of gifts like yours is one of the greatest declarations of Ram Pride. We are incredibly grateful for the support and loyalty you give to our campus community! Show your support here.
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2018 Energy Institute Summer Internship Recipients Announced
Alan Cogen's generous $100,000 gift to the Colorado State University Energy Institute will support - among other things - twelve summer internships for deserving students pursuing careers in energy. "The Energy Institute is at the forefront of clean energy research, technology and development. I am excited to be able to support students, researchers and faculty that are working to find new, clean energy solutions," said Cogen.
The following student industry internships and CSU research projects have been selected as recipients of the Cogen Gift Funds:
- Danielle Hatton will be working with Access Sensor Technologies as a business/marketing intern.
- Fathalla Eldali will be working with Spirae as a power engineering intern supporting sales and business development.
- Juan Venegas Jimenez will be assisting NREL researchers in determining the potential of algae to meet future energy and food demands.
- Liam Lewane will be working to demonstrate the ability of a network of aerosol sensors to measure spatiotemporal aerosol size distributions in an urban environment.
- Aleczander (Alec) Taylor will be improving Sorghum transformation efficiency to enable engineering for enhanced bioenergy traits.
- Brendon Stanley will be using local solar radiation sensor network for detection and measurement of cloud vectors and active management of solar power in transmission systems.
- Katherine Simota will be exploring the role of the coal industry in perpetrating environmental injustices on the Navajo Nation Native American Reservation with documentary photography and film.
- Mars Rayno will be investigating the feasibility of using aerogel as an insulator for biomass cookstoves and other biomass combustion devices.
- Drayton Browning will be working with twelve K-12 school districts across Colorado participating in the "Wind for Schools" program by supporting maintenance and education programs.
- Mark Norris will be conducting a feasibility study of turn-key tools used to help CSU benchmark, analyze, and achieve energy and sustainability goals.
- Jordan Julian will design of low-cost solar tracking system enabled by artificial muscles and origami folding.
- Joshua Urban Assessment of new approach in evaluating the sooting tendency of renewable fuels using a spry flame burner.
Students first had the opportunity to meet and network with energy companies considering internships at the Energy Institute Industry Networking Night in late-March. CSU Faculty and Industry Advisors then recommended interns for open positions. Companies proposing internships were asked to provide matching funds. A committee of Colorado State University Research Associate Deans selected the final twelve recipients for the 2018 summer program and the Walter Scott Jr. College of Engineering provided matching funds for two of the CSU research projects. Please join us in congratulating these exemplary students on their internship opportunities in the energy sector.
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Spotlight on Hailey Summers, Wind for Schools
Hailey Summers is pursuing a doctorate in sustainability modeling at the Colorado State University Energy Institute and is currently working for the Wind For Schools program. The program is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, and fosters workforce development and education initiatives for K-12 schools, as well as college programs. Wind For Schools partners with the KidWind Project and the National Energy Education Development Project to provide school curriculum that involves interactive learning.
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| Hailey Summers, PhD Student at Colorado State University Energy Institute, teaches students at JFK High School in Denver. Photo by Ashley Ruiz |
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This curriculum involves installing active wind turbines at the schools, so students can have firsthand experience. According to the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Efficiency and Renewable Energy, the aim is to "engage America's communities in wind energy applications, benefits, and challenges." The program now has 145 wind turbines at schools in 12 states, each featuring a turbine up to 3.7 kW and 70-feet-tall. You can view the interactive map here.
Thirteen turbines are located throughout rural areas in Colorado, including nearby Wellington Middle School in Wellington, Colo. and as far out as Walsh High School in Walsh, Colo. in the southeast part of the state.
For her role in the project, Summers travels to rural schools in Colorado to ensure their turbines are running and educates students on the processes and benefits of wind energy. The dynamic of the program is new for Summers, who says, "teaching kids is pretty stress free compared to teaching a collegiate level course. Also, the kids get so excited."
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School of Global Environmental Sustainability announces 2018-2019 Global Challenges Research Teams
The School of Global Environmental Sustainability (SoGES) at Colorado State University has announced the selection of four Global Challenges Research Teams from a competitive field of proposals. The awards are intended to encourage interdisciplinary understanding of complex global environmental issues, foster collaborative cross-campus partnerships, and support sustainability research at CSU. One of the winning teams focuses on "Next-generation electricity demand response," and is headed up by Energy Institute principal investigator and Lisa & Desi Rhoden Endowed Chair Associate Professor Sid Suryanarayanan.
The project will generate initial results toward development of systematic methods for enabling the next generation of electricity demand response programs, aimed at increasing free-market mechanisms in the end-user realm of the electricity grid. They will investigate new pricing techniques for retail electricity vendors - known as aggregators - that make a profit by representing aggregated electric loads on the end-user side and moving them away from the time of peak demand in the electricity grid. The uniqueness of their work is in minimizing the impact on the customer (things like loss of comfort) while maximizing the profit of the aggregator. The game-changing aspect of their approach is to estimate the coincident peak hour in the system and engage demand response through incentives rather than impose a daily requirement on the end-user.
Suryanarayanan will be working alongside Edwin Chong, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Mathematics; and Jesse Burkhardt, Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics on this innovative project.
Read more in SOURCE.
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Ryan Pearson Awarded the 2018 CSU Demo Days Energy Institute Graduate Student Poster of the Year
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Ryan Pearson (left) and Matthew Ryan (right) at the 2018 ARPA-E Summit.
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On April 10, Colorado State University hosted Demo Days at the Lory Student Center Ballroom on campus. Graduate students and companies presented their cutting edge work as part of the event's entrepreneurial showcase. The showcase hosted a wide breath of research topics from exoskeletons for canines to new methane detecting technology.
But it was Graduate Student Ryan Pearson and
Matthew Ryan's research on "P
aintable Heat-Reflective Coatings for Low-Cost Energy Efficient Windows," that caught the eye of the CSU Energy Institute's team of judges. Pearson's innovative project aims to retrofit old, inefficient windows in hot climates with a simple spray-on coating that reflects heat from the outside. This cost-effective heat reflective coating can add up to significant cost savings - around $1000 per year for a single family living in Houston, Texas or $1 per square foot of window space.
The material will cost $1.35 - so it pays for itself in less than two summers of cooling bills! It is a simple, low-cost way to improve keep homes in hot environments cool.
The Energy Institute awarded Pearson the 2018 CSU Demo Days Energy Institute Graduate Student Poster of the Year for his work
. "The judges were extremely impressed with Ryan's poster, the potential of the technology to save energy in buildings, and his ability to articulate both how the technology works and its relevance to the energy-efficiency market," explain Jeff Muhs, the associate director of the Energy Institute.
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What we are reading this week
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Seaweed-into-biofuel project gets Department of Energy support
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For funding
- The Energy and Environment program at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is soliciting Letters of Inquiry for innovative, multidisciplinary research projects examining energy transmission and distribution (T&D) in the United States. Understanding changing electricity, oil, and gas T&D systems is critical to gaining insight s about how the energy system may evolve in coming years,especially given the expected rise in distributed energy resources (DERs) such as rooftop solar installations, electric vehicles, household-level batteries, and other storage devices. Grants up to $250,000 are available. Submission deadline: June 1, 2018. Click here read more (.pdf).
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Up to $25,000 in funding is available to qualified teams for training in start-up customer discovery through the National Science Foundation New York City Regional Innovation Node (NYCRIN). The CSU Energy Institute and CSU Ventures have become informal affiliates of the NYCRIN, which has been awarded funds to run what is called an Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) Phase 0 I-Corps program. If you have a start-up idea and are planning to submit a NSF SBIR Phase I application, Phase 0 grants dramatically increase your odds of success. More information and the application can be found on the NYCRIN website.
- The Colorado Energy Research Collaboratory (CERC) is pleased to announce the latest version of its Cost-Share Grant (CSG) Program for 2018. The expanded program also includes a Seed Grant option for collection of preliminary data that can enhance the competitiveness of grant applications. Please click here to download a word document with more information. Applications to the CERC Seed Grant Program may be electronically submitted at any time up until December 1, 2018.
For students
- CSU offers support and advice for students traveling internationally. Students are encouraged to register as individual travelers when traveling abroad for academic purposes (i.e. study abroad, conferences, field work etc.) Doing so provides students with benefits like travel insurance and support in case of an emergency.
- Join the Energy Institute as a Building Assistant! Help open the Powerhouse Energy Campus each day, schedule meetings, care for the lawn and provide assistance to visitors. Click here to read the full job description.
In general
- Denver Startup Week is sponsored by Colorado State University this year! The Denver Initiative team, who is funding the sponsorship, is looking for submissions. Groups involved so far include: ASCEND, VPR, Institute for Entrepreneurship, CSU Ventures, CSUAA, and the Journalism department. Learn more about Denver Startup Week here. You can submit a group or individual proposal through this Google form until April 23rd.
- Tecnical Support Specialist with OPAL-RT Technologies -
Qualified candidates should have an electrical engineering degree and 1 - 3 years of experience. Under the supervision of the Support Team Leader in the Montreal's Head Office, the Technical Support Engineer supports OPAL-RT's software and hardware tools for real-time hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) applications. He is responsible for customer's on-site training, commissioning and integration, as well as internal support and testing. Supporting OPAL-RT's satellite offices, helping with upcoming deliveries and developing internal support tools are also part of the job...Read more and apply here.
- Energy Fellows Institute (EFI) is an executive immersion program providing a platform for the exchange of ideas, opportunity, skills and community to develop leaders ready to succeed in world changing advanced energy businesses.EFI will run from May 16-23rd with the weekend off. Fellows should be proven leaders with a strong interest in expanding their career in or into the advanced energy industry. Executives and entrepreneurs interested in applying for the Fellowship should have 10+ years of proven leadership experience in the technology or business communities, with success leading an organization in a resource-limited and time sensitive environment. Apply here now through April 18, 2018.
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The Environmental Defense Fund's Oil & Gas Program has a number of open positions available. Click the links below to learn more about each opportunity.
- NREL's Industry Growth Forum on May 2-4th in Denver is the perfect venue for growing companies to prepare, refine, and present their businesses to a wide range of investors. Entrepreneurial companies ranging from university and laboratory spinouts to commercially ready clean technologies from across the globe apply to present at the Forum. Please register now to attend the event and take advantage of discounted rates.
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