The Humboldt County Renewable Energy Secure Community (RESCO) project gives all of us at SERC a welcome opportunity to focus our effort on the community where we live, work, and play. The goal of the RESCO project is to...
Recent posts
Schatz CenterA Message from the Director
Last week I had the pleasure of participating in Climate Ride California (www.climateride. org), a bike ride from nearby Fortuna to San Francisco over five days. Participants raise money for bicycle and climate advocacy...
Peter LehmanGasification: Torrefaction of Wood Samples
Although SERC’s three-year biomass gasification project is winding down, we are continuing to research biomass and its role as a renewable fuel. Our latest endeavour is torrefaction. Torrefaction is a mild form of...
Greg ChapmanWorking with the Yurok Tribe on Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
The Schatz Lab has a long-standing relationship working with the Yurok Tribe on energy projects. Starting in 1999, we installed a fuel cell power system at School House Peak that powered their cell phone repeater...
Jim ZoellickRenewable Energy in Central America: ¡Mucho Sol!
SERC’s Richard Engel recently spent half a year away from the lab, on a Fulbright-sponsored assignment in El Salvador. He assisted Universidad Don Bosco in renewable energy program development, designing and teaching a...
Richard EngelLighting Africa’s Product Awards
LED lighting products, many of which are solar charged, are streaming into the African market and displacing incandescent flashlights and fuel-based lighting. They hold the promise to improve peoples’ lives and reduce...
A Message from the Director
Three months ago in this column, I took the Obama administration to task for announcing that vast tracts of seabed were being opened to oil and gas exploration and exploitation. It turns out that the administration’s...
SERC to Conduct Wave Monitoring & Modeling Research for PG&E WaveConnect
Humboldt County is awash with renewable energy resource potential and wave power is the largest by far. Pacific Gas and Electric recognizes this potential and is developing a pilot scale wave power facility called...
Colin SheppardA Smart Grid Solution to Prevent Brownouts in Bhutan
Students from SERC and the Renewable Energy Student Union (RESU) won a $75,000 EPA grant to implement a Smart Grid device to reduce brownouts on village-scale electrical grids in developing countries. We developed the...
Patsari Cookstove Construction at SERC
SERC recently had the pleasure of hosting and collaborating with members of the Interdisciplinary Group for Appropriate Rural Technology (GIRA – www.gira.org.mx), on the construction of a Patsari cookstove. GIRA...
Promoting Nationwide Energy Efficiency Through Measurement and Performance-Based Rewards
Over the last two years, SERC has been engaged in energy efficiency policy analysis at the national scale. The National Resources Defense Council’s Center for Market Innovation contracted SERC to answer the question:...
Testing the Performance of a New Electrolysis Cell Stack
At last spring’s National Hydrogen Association (NHA) conference, graduate research assistant Andrea Allen reported on the performance and efficiency of our hydrogen fueling station over its first full year of operation...
Meg Harper
