Solar

UCs Merced and Santa Cruz became the newest campuses in the system to be named an agricultural experiment stations (AES), UC President Michael Drake announced at today’s Regents’ meeting.

They are the first campuses in more than 50 years to earn the designation.

    It wasn’t exactly “Racers, start your engines.” More like, “Racers, remove
    your covers.”

    But the solar car challenge put on by CalTeach and the Solar Energy
    Association at UC Merced Saturday, Nov. 5, was still an action-packed day
    of racing.

    Several dozen middle school students, their teachers and parents gathered
    on campus to test out the cars they built over the last few weeks.

    The Educational Employees Federal Credit Union supplied funding for materials.

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.

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.

Undergraduates will have a new, one-of-a-kind class they can sign up for this fall — Climate Justice — a hybrid course that features lectures by faculty from all 10 UC campuses.

A research project conducted by a UC Merced graduate student is becoming a reality as the Turlock Irrigation District (TID) approved piloting the first-in-the-nation construction of solar panels over water canals.

Finding creative solutions to lessen humans’ impact on the environment and reduce reliance on fossil fuels is a core tenet of the renewable energy field, something engineering Professor Sarah Kurtz specializes in.

When people hear the word “solar,” many think of solar panels on a house, which generate electricity. But there is another way to use energy harnessed by the sun: heat.

With a new $20 million federal grant, UC Merced becomes part of a multi-institutional research collaborative to develop artificial intelligence — or AI — solutions to tackle some of agriculture’s biggest challenges related to water management, climate change and integration of new technology into farming.

Covering the 4,000 miles of California’s water canals could save billions of gallons of water and generate renewable power for the state every year, according to a new study.