Media Watch Archives
Sonoma Fire, Microgrids, EV Chargers
KPCC -
Microgrids. Southern California Edison has shut off power to about 1,500 homes in the Southland today. It's a preemptive measure in case heavy winds knock over electricity transmission lines that could spark a wildfire. The move follows a controversial power shutoff in the Bay Area, and it's raising an important question: Isn't there a better way to produce and transmit electricity? Guest: Jack Brouwer, [associate professor, mechanical & aerospace engineering], University of California, Irvine. (Starts: 13:10)
‘There are lives at stake’: PG&E criticized over blackouts to prevent California wildfires
CNBC -
“There are lives at stake,” said Jack Brouwer, an engineering professor and director of the National Fuel Cell Research Center at the University of California, Irvine. “I can’t over emphasis the calamity that these events cause at the neighborhood level. Hundreds of health care facilities don’t have back-up generators,” he said. “If you’re out of power for an hour, that’s fine, but for a couple of days — those lives count as much as those that would be lost in a fire.” The blackouts could also seriously hamper local response efforts for fire emergencies, Brouwer added.
Sunpin Solar hosts engineering students to learn about solar project development
Solar Builder -
A group of engineering students from Engineers for a Sustainable World at University of California, Irvine visited nearby Sunpin Solar, a leading utility-scale solar developer and long-term asset owner. … The cool part to us is the tangible, real-world learning: UC Irvine students learned about the development process from land acquisition, construction to project completion. The presentation also addressed the questions students raised before their visit.
UC Irvine Engineering Students Get Firsthand Look At Solar
Solar Industry -
A group of students from UCI’s Engineers for a Sustainable World attended Sunpin’s “Lunch and Learn” presentation and took a tour of the developer’s 96.75 MW ColGreen North Shore solar project in Riverside County. … “As engineering students, we learn about the science behind solar panels but never about the logistics and maintenance of a solar power plant. It gave us a new perspective on solar power,” says Nicole Alvarez, vice president of external affairs at UCI’s Engineers for a Sustainable World.
Sunpin Solar hosts California college students for solar ‘lunch and learn’
Solar Power World -
A group of engineering students from Engineers for a Sustainable World at University of California, Irvine visited Irvine-based utility-scale solar developer Sunpin Solar last week for a Lunch and Learn presentation and a solar tour at Sunpin Solar’s 96.75-MW ColGreen North Shore solar project in Riverside County. Sunpin Solar execs covered the fundamentals of solar energy, the solar project development process, and explored post-graduation options in renewable energy industry for aspiring sustainable engineers.
Opinion: California needs a power company ready for today’s challenges
Silicon Valley.com -
Instead of controlling the power grid from a central location, PG&E had to send crews into the field to manually control the outages. “It’s an incredible travesty, this sort of really crude and unsophisticated approach for dealing with what is a very serious issue,” Jack Brouwer, an engineering professor and director of the National Fuel Cell Research Center at UC Irvine, told the New York Times.
5G Technology Still Faces Heat, Signal Issues, Expert Says
Orange County Business Journal -
Reflecting the speed of tech changes, University of California, Irvine scientists said they’ve already developed silicon chips that are at least four times faster than the speed of the upcoming 5G and pushes technology into “the 6G standard.” Commercialization of the super-fast wireless transceiver could be a year or two down the road, project leader and UCI Professor Payam Heydari told the Business Journal in July. [Subscription required, you can request an electronic copy of the article by sending an email to communications@uci.edu.]
Enevate Sees Demand for Fast-Charging Auto Batteries
Orange County Business Journal -
The company was co-founded in 2005 by [Marc] Madou and Ben Park, who is now Enevate’s chief technology officer and who has a Ph.D. in mechanical and aerospace engineering from UCI. … [Jarvis Tou, Enevate executive vice president for marketing and products], called the company a “spinout” from the University of California, Irvine research. The company isn’t connected to UCI as a majority state is owned by outside investors and a minority share is held by employees. [Subscription required, you can request an electronic copy of the article by sending an email to communications@uci.edu.]
California Power Companies Race to Upgrade Systems
Voice of America -
Distributed power production could also reduce the need for transmission lines in high risk areas allow “local production of renewable electricity, for example distributed solar and battery energy storage. Those are also very important technologies for avoiding wildfires,” said Jack Brouwer, an engineering professor at the University of California, Irvine. The director of the university’s National Fuel Cell Research Center, Brouwer says new fuel cell technology, similar to that being introduced in cars, can create more local generation. The university’s medical center gets 30 percent of its power from fuel cells.
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Announces 2019 Inventor Fellows
Philanthropy News Digest -
Launched in 2016, the $36 million fellowship program recognizes early-career innovators at U.S. universities who are creating tools and technologies with the potential to accelerate progress in the areas of scientific research, environmental conservation, and patient care. … The 2019 Moore Inventor Fellows are … Chang Liu (University of California, Irvine), whose engineered yeast cells, which act like an immune system, will support the rapid, scalable, and affordable evolution of custom antibodies for drug discovery and biomedical research ….