Energy Students Win EPA Laurel

May 01, 2008

Arcata - Seven Humboldt State University students from the Renewable Energy Student Union (RESU) have won national recognition for a design project to monitor wind resources.

The seven graduate and undergraduate students associated with HSU’s Department of Environmental Resources Engineering showcased the results of their year-long wind monitoring project at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s recent Sustainability Expo on the National Mall in Washington. They distinguished themselves in the EPA’s P3 (People, Prosperity and the Planet) Sustainability Design Competition, using a $10,000 competition grant they received last year to finance their participation. The seven competed against 57 other P3 Award contestants from across the country and received an honorable mention.

Two of the department’s professors, Arne Jacobson and Charles Chamberlin, advised the students, who include Colin Sheppard, Andrea Allen, Peter Johnstone, Ranjit Deshmukh, Heidi Benzonelli, Kristen Radecsky, Juliette Bohn, Cameron Bracken and James Apple.

Their effort, named “Catching the Wind: a Low-Cost Method for Wind Site Assessment,” centered on the installation of a wind monitoring station on a parcel of land in Kneeland owned by Rebecca and Eliel Saucedo, whose son Doug is an HSU alum (‘05). Station in place, the students developed a software tool to reduce the time needed to monitor a prospective site for wind power, a renewable energy source that helps reduce demand for fossil fuels, curbs local air and water pollution and cuts greenhouse gas emissions.

“Humboldt County has an appreciable wind resource and great potential for wind development on both the small and large scale,” Professor Jacobson said. “For large wind farms, site assessment is a small portion of the overall project cost. For small and medium scale wind power projects, however, the cost and time required for site assessment can be a significant barrier for project development.” Hence the importance of the students’ project.

Dr. Jacobson said current practices require at least one year of measured wind data or the use of expensive software to estimate a site’s resource. “The students from RESU responded to this challenge by using their grant funds to purchase wind monitoring equipment which they installed on a ridge in Kneeland. They also developed and evaluated several methods that reduce the length of time needed to make accurate wind resource assessments.”

Their methods will be available for use as a Statistical Wind Energy Estimation Tool (SWEET), a web-based, open source software package.

The Environmental Resources Engineering students were supported by Ben Scurfield of Scurfield Solar, Michael Welch of the Redwood Alliance, Troy Nicolini and the staff of the Eureka National Weather Service and the Schatz Energy Research Center.

The RESU is a student club dedicated to promoting renewable energy technologies and education in and around Humboldt County. It was formed four years ago when students decided to take their education into their own hands and initiate projects for themselves. In 2005, they won first place in the National Hydrogen Association’s annual Hydrogen Student Design Contest.

Since then, RESU has worked on a number of projects, including the installation of a solar radiation monitoring station on the roof of the HSU library and the design of a ~10kW photovoltaic array for the roof of HSU’s Old Music Building.

Details about RESU and its projects are at http://www.humboldt.edu/~resu.

Principal student participants in “Catching the Wind:”

For more information, contact Colin Sheppard at colin@humboldt.edu or (707) 616-8532.