Solar

As UC Merced’s new energy manager, it’s Varick Erickson’s job to watch every kilowatt hour used on campus and identify ways to save them.

“It’s a lot like rummaging around in the couch and looking for change,” Erickson said.

Except the spare kilowatt hours he finds could save the campus hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Professor Roland Winston knows a jellyfish that can help people see more clearly.

But it’s not the kind found in the ocean. It’s one that’s about to earn Winston and UC Merced a U.S. patent, and is the solution to a problem that vexed many famous scientists.

They traveled nearly 20 hours by plane and bus across 5,700 miles to spend three weeks in the Central Valley sun.

Making an entire campus sustainable takes a lot of planning, education and work.

But those efforts are what earned two of UC Merced’s sustainability leaders systemwide recognition.

http://www.ucmerced.edu/sites/www/files/news/images/120601miltonchennpi.jpg" style="width: 200px; height: 254px; " title="Milton Chen, an international authority on mass media and education, speaks to participants of the National Parks Institute Executive Leadership Program in April.

When Andrea Rodarte began studying physics, she first wanted to look to the stars for answers. Instead, she's finding them in nanoparticles.

UC Merced applied math Professor Boaz Ilan is a major contributor to a national research team exploring a novel way to use fractal geometry to improve the production of electricity in solar panels.

A team of researchers at the University of California, Merced, has redesigned luminescent solar concentrators to be more efficient at sending sunlight to solar cells.

The advancement could be an important breakthrough for solar energy harvesting, said UC Merced physics Professor Sayantani Ghosh, who led the project.

"We tweaked the traditional flat design for luminescent solar concentrators and made them into cylinders," Ghosh said. "The results of this architectural redesign surprised us, as it significantly improves their efficiency."

From improving the performance and efficiency of solar cells to using solar technology to speed up fruit drying, a wide array of topics were covered by distinguished scientists at the UC Solar Research Symposium at UC Merced on Dec. 9.

Using solar thermal energy to power an air conditioning unit can be difficult and expensive. But a team of researchers at the University of California, Merced, have added a game-changing advance to the process that could make it much simpler, less costly and more effective.