Energy

Federal and state government officials journeyed to the western corner of Merced County on Thursday to announce a new project to place solar panels on the water in the Delta-Mendota Canal.

The project is part of a $19 million investment through President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act announced by the Department of the Interior to install panels over irrigation canals in California, Oregon and Utah, with the aims of decreasing evaporation of critical water supplies and advancing clean energy goals.

A team from UC Merced has been selected to participate in the Department of Energy (DOE) "BattChallenge," a three-year competition to develop a battery for an electric vehicle.

A UC Merced researcher and her teammates around the world have succeeded in measuring the total amount of matter in the universe for the second time.

A new paper in the Astrophysical Journal, titled “Constraining Cosmological Parameters using the Cluster Mass-Richness Relation,” shows that matter makes up 31% of the universe, with the remainder consisting of dark energy — answering one of the most interesting and important questions in cosmology.

Four UC Merced researchers will share in the new California Climate Action Seed Grants and Matching Grants, which are the result of an historic partnership between the University of California and the state of California.

The University today announced it is awarding over $80 million in climate action grants to spur implementation of solutions that directly address state climate priorities.

Solar films developed by a graduate student in the Department of Physics at UC Merced while on an internship at NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC) not only survived 10 months in space with minimal degradation, but the little damage they did incur was more than 90 percent reversible.

For the first time, UC Merced faculty members from each of the campus’s three schools have been chosen as principal investigators on some of the 21 exciting new projects that are being funded through UC’s Multicampus Research Programs and Initiatives (MRPI).

In addition, UC Merced researchers are collaborating on 10 of the other projects.

In the 2022 Sustainable Campus Index, UC Merced placed Top 10 in several categories including a tie for the No.1 spot in research. The annual report published by the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) recognizes top-performing colleges and universities overall and in 17 sustainability impact areas.

For the first time, UC Merced has been awarded a Platinum rating in recognition of its sustainability achievements under the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE) Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System (STARS.)

Platinum is the highest rating a higher education institution can receive for its sustainability programs and actions. Currently, only 11 institutions throughout the nation have earned this rating.

Green energy solutions are critical to meet current and future power demands, and while solar and wind power are great, they are also site-specific and intermittent.

Distinguished Professor Roland Winston was among the first eight faculty members at UC Merced in 2003, two years before the campus opened. When he retires July 1, at age 86, he will be the first of those eight to leave — but his work on solar energy applications will continue.

It's not hyperbolic to say Winston is a really big deal in the worlds of physics and solar energy.