With 1.3 billion people globally still living without access to reliable electricity, there remains an acute and persistent need for affordable, efficient, and quality off-grid appliances. For over five years, engineers...
Recent posts
Schatz CenterAqueous Phase Reformation: New Pathway for Renewable Biomass to Offset Fossil Fuels
I’ve been leading a new area of research aimed at offsetting natural gas consumption with hydrogen produced from biomass-derived sugars or waste glycerol from biodiesel production. The process utilizes waste heat in the...
BLR Biomass Project
A key element of our RePower Humboldt vision is to use the county’s extensive biomass resource to produce electricity for local consumption. The goal of the Blue Lake Rancheria (BLR) Biomass Project is to do just that...
Jim ZoellickSERC Presents “Fuel Up with Hydrogen” Workshop for GATE Academy
Every January, local K-8 students converge on HSU for the annual GATE Academy. This event, coordinated by the Humboldt County Office of Education’s Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) Program, provides GATE students...
Allison HansberryBiomass Energy Workshop
SERC is proud to be co-hosting a biomass energy workshop along with the University of California’s Woody Biomass Utilization Group. The workshop will take place on November 7th from 8:30 AM to 5 PM at HSU’s...
A Message from the Director
We have completed the transition from summer to fall here in far northern California, and – while it has been clear and sunny for the past few days – we recently had the first heavy rainstorm of the season. As the...
Arne JacobsonSolar Mini-Grids Put India’s Villages in a New Light
As we reported in our spring issue, SERC is part of an international team assessing opportunities to use solar power for rural electrification in India. Providing solar power via a central PV array and a village...
Richard EngelBlue Energy in the Humboldt Bay
Blue Energy, a potential source of renewable and sustainable energy, is the energy released from the salination of water when freshwater mixes with saltwater. One process for capturing this energy is pressure-retarded...
Andrea AchilliSERC Continues Electric Vehicle Planning Work in Two New Regions
Earlier this year we reported on our plug-in electric vehicle (PEV) readiness planning work for Humboldt County. Building on this effort, SERC is now engaged in similar studies for New Delhi, India as well as the...
Colin SheppardHSU Hydrogen Fueling Station Hosts First Hydrogen Fuel Cell Commute from the Bay Area
Anand Gopal, research scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs (LBNL) and former Schatz Energy Fellow, and Elizabeth Pimentel-Gopal, former HSU Assistant Director of Admissions, drove from Berkeley to Arcata to...
Meg HarperSERC Completes Instrumentation of RFT Torrefier
In September, Greg Chapman and I made our second trip to Renewable Fuel Technologies (RFT) to continue work on measuring the energy and mass balances of RFT’s pilot-scale torrefier. The one-ton-per-day torrefier...
Marc MarshallSpeaker Series: Nathan Hultman on US Climate Policy
HSU’s Sustainable Futures Speaker Series presents Nathan Hultman, Associate Professor and Director of the Environmental Policy Program at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy. He is also a Fellow at...
