Illustration by Marc Lehman, University Marketing

For researchers at Oregon State and Portland State, this black box is a microbial fuel cell, a renewable energy source that uses bacteria to convert biodegradable materials, like wastewater, into electricity. And the knobs in this scenario are connected to nanostructures, such as carbon nanotubes. Frank Chaplen and Hong Liu of OSU’s Department of Biological and Ecological Engineering and Jun Jiao of Portland State’s Department of Physics are using nanotubes to boost the power output of microbial fuel cells.

Some evidence in the scientific literature suggests that adding nanostructures to the surface of the fuel cell’s anodes, components on which the bacteria live, could improve the power output, but the researchers didn’t know how or why. Not only that, it’s difficult to control the properties of nanostructures, like width or density. With so many variables to work with, they were struggling to solve their problem in a reasonable amount of time.

This is where Alan and Xiaoli Fern come in. Chaplen asked the couple, who teach in OSU’s School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), to create a mathematical solution. In this case, Chaplen was looking for a mathematical algorithm, a procedure expressed as a set of rules, that would inform the researchers which of the myriad variables would be best to tackle first — in other words, which way to turn the knobs.

Alan Fern is an expert in automated planning and decision theory, which uses computing power to make intelligent decisions about sequential problems. His wife, Xiaoli, specializes in active machine learning, a discipline that aids in identifying the most useful data points for solving a problem.

And so, for the first time, although they have been together since graduate school, the Ferns’ academic interests converged, and they began working on the problem together.

“Traditional research has focused mostly on design problems that have clean, analytical solutions, which require many simplifying assumptions. We come at the problem from a different angle. We start with realistic, messy problems and design algorithms that solve them with raw computing power,” Alan Fern explains.

Mathematical Challenge

They saw the fuel cell project as an opportunity to make a difference, not only for microbial fuel cell research, but for experiments that are difficult to control. For example, in the fuel cell project, instead of requiring an exact density of the nanomaterial, their algorithm could account for a range of densities.

It was just the kind of math-oriented challenge that graduate student Javad Azimi was looking for when he joined the project as a research assistant, helping to design the algorithms and writing the software.

“I really love math, and I like working with real data. So when they told me about it, I said, ‘Yeah, let’s do it!’” Azimi says.

The team set to work on helping Chaplen and Liu find out which nanomaterials (such as gold, iron or carbon nanotubes) and what properties (such as length, width and density) would most likely produce the best power output.

“These statistical models try to capture the researcher’s uncertainty about regions they haven’t explored and take advantage of regions they have explored fairly thoroughly,” Alan Fern adds.

They also performed simulations that can be run repeatedly by a computer. The Ferns and Azimi used this type of modeling to inform decisions about the best experiment to run next and which experiments would be advantageous to run simultaneously, or as computer scientists say, in parallel. Answering such questions saved Chaplen, Liu and Jiao both money and time.

”These experiments are very time consuming, and the researchers can’t afford to run them sequentially, so they have to be in parallel, and we can help them figure out which experiments would complement each other in terms of the information they provide,” Xiaoli Fern adds.

More Electricity

Using this approach, the team was able to successfully identify nanomaterials that enhanced power production by 10 to 20 times. Their efforts were funded by a four-year grant from the Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute in collaboration with the U.S. Army Research Laboratory.

The Ferns and Azimi have also applied their work to data from a project examining hydrogen produced by cyanobacteria, another potential renewable energy source.

In the future, they expect to continue working with the microbial fuel cell team. In fact, they have already submitted another grant proposal, which would help Jiao advance the understanding of nanostructure properties. Nanotechnology has diverse applications in many areas including medicine, electronics and green energy production.

Azimi said that after presenting their research in papers and at conferences he has discovered that it could apply to areas that they hadn’t considered, such as improving the movement of robots.

“Because we are working to solve real problems with our algorithms, I believe the impact of our work will be really high,” says Azimi, who plans to continue this work for his dissertation.

More electricity from sunlight is the goal for Alex Chang, right, and his thin-films student research team of (left to right) Nate Edwards, Debra Gilbuena and Wei Wang. (Photo: Karl Maasdam)

Since coming to Oregon State University a decade ago, Chih-hung “Alex” Chang has made research his passion as well as his profession. The associate professor in chemical engineering has two patents and six more pending. With other OSU faculty and students, he has helped to create two companies, Nanobits LLC and CSD Nano LLC. His work on what scientists call thin films — nanometer scale chemical layers laid down with drill-team precision — holds the promise of new coatings for eyeglasses and a new generation of power producing solar cells.

In 2004, the National Science Foundation recognized Chang with a prestigious Early Career Award. He has received additional NSF research grants and support from the Department of Energy, Sharp Laboratories of America, ONAMI and Oregon BEST.

OSU’s University Venture Development Fund has also been critical to his research. The fund supports technology with commercial potential while providing a hefty Oregon tax credit to donors. It delivers a direct shot in the arm for research leading to new products.

Alex Chang’s dad was an engineer, but Alex nearly took another direction as an undergraduate at the National Taiwan University. He considered becoming an artist.
In fact, art runs in the family. His brother Chih-wei followed in their father’s footsteps with a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering, but he decided not to continue that career. After graduating, he moved to New York City and studied fashion illustration.

For Alex, research held stronger appeal. At the University of Florida, he studied an emerging alternative to silicon for photovoltaic cells known as CIGS thin films. He collaborated with fellow graduate student B.J. Stanbery, a CIGS photovoltaics pioneer who recently founded a new company, HelioVolt.

At OSU, Chang and a student research team envision electricity generating solar collectors built into windows, roofs and other building parts. Debra Gilbuena, a double master’s student in business and chemical engineering, puts it this way: “How cool would it be if you could put solar cells on all the windows in all the skyscrapers in a city and collect energy?” Gilbuena, who co-holds a patent for an electrochemical sensor, works in Chang’s lab and serves as a chief technology officer for CSD Nano.

Thin-film solar cells — whether made of silicon or the CIGS metals copper, indium, gallium and selenium — typically consist of six or more layers to maximize light absorption and sustain an electric current, says Chang. His team is developing printing techniques to replace more expensive vacuum production methods. Chang has already used an inkjet printing-based process to make high-mobility thin-film transistors.

With new techniques, Chang’s goal is to lower cost and chemical use while maintaining high efficiency. Based on a market analysis by Gilbuena, Chang expects demand to be high. “We need to demonstrate good efficiency. There’s no doubt there will be commercial interest,” he says.

For more about energy research by Chang and other OSU scientists and engineers, see Expanding Our Energy Portfolio in the 2008 president’s report.

To support energy research at OSU, contact the Oregon State University Foundation.

Watch OSU electrical engineer Ted Brekken explain the need to modify the electrical grid.

As wind turbines and solar arrays sprout up across the landscape, an urgent challenge arises: How to capture all that alternative energy for the electrical grid. Wind velocity and solar intensity vary wildly as weather changes and as seasons shift — fluctuations that are often out of sync with power demand.

With $399,973 in funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, OSU engineer Ted Brekken is tackling the problem by investigating scaled-up energy storage systems to even out the variability of wind energy generation. Such systems — which he likens to giant batteries — would “buffer the peaks and valleys in wind farm production,” he says. Wind energy thus would become “more predictable, more forecastable.

Learn more about OSU’s ARRA-funded research in human health, climate change, the oceans and education here.

Chinese nuclear scientists YuQuang Li (left) from China's State Nuclear Power Technology Company and Professor HanYang Gu of Shanghai Jiaotong University calibrate instruments for a test of OSU's scale-model reactor. (Photo: Karl Maasdam)

Last winter, the cavernous vault housing OSU’s nuclear test facility was base camp for a team of elite scientists from Shanghai and Beijing. For six months, the Chinese engineers studied every bolt, tube and plastic elbow in the scale-model reactor. They ran accident simulations and analyzed the data. They posited every scenario under the sun, from a punctured pipe to “loss of coolant” to a complete loss of offsite power known as a “station blackout.” Each time, the reactor shut down safely without a hitch.

In the spring, these top-gun scientists took their OSU training home to China. They’re overseeing construction of the world’s first Westinghouse AP1000 plant, which broke ground in Zhejiang Province in March. Three more of the Westinghouse plants will go up in short order. Cost to the Chinese government: $8 billion, including $500,000 for safety analysis test training at OSU as part of the Westinghouse tech-transfer program. By 2030, China hopes to have more than 100 reactors up and running.

“China has a very aggressive nuclear power plant plan,” says OSU Professor Qiao Wu, who trained the Chinese team under contract to Westinghouse.

The Chinese team was in Corvallis to benefit from OSU’s national leadership in developing advanced light-water nuclear energy technologies, making them safer, more efficient, more economical, more portable and more flexible. Groups who tour the Radiation Center – a ‘60s-vintage building on the west edge of campus – must sign in and clip on a visitor’s badge before entering. The olive-drab corridors with their low ceilings and chocolate-brown linoleum seem unlikely passages into a world-class research facility. But up and down those modest hallways, ordinary wood-veneer doors open into some of the world’s most advanced nuclear-science laboratories.

There, faculty and students are researching the next generation of nuclear power: high-temperature gas-cooled reactors, modular reactors that minimize operator error, new ways to reprocess and recycle spent fuel, uber-sophisticated computer simulations, remote radiation detection and other forward-looking technologies.

As environmental, economic and humanitarian threats loom across the globe, researchers point to nuclear’s huge potential for cheap, clean electricity. Princeton University’s Carbon Mitigation Initiative estimates that doubling global production of electricity by nuclear fission (now 16 percent or 370 gigawatts) could prevent 1 billion tons of annual carbon emissions by 2055.

Last fall, President Obama expressed support for continuing to explore nuclear technologies. “It is unlikely that we can meet our aggressive climate goals if we eliminate nuclear power as an option,” the Obama New Energy for America plan states.

Aggressive for Passive

Supriyadi Sadi, a Ph.D. student in Radiation Health Physics, is working with chemicals in a glove box which provides a non-oxygen atmosphere. (Photo: Karl Maasdam)

It’s more than a little ironic that China is adopting this new-era technology ahead of the United States. After all, the AP1000 – a 1,000-megawatt light-water reactor that uses “passive” shutdown technologies to minimize operator error – was extensively tested in Corvallis at the university’s Radiation Center, earning licensure from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) in 2005. But as this and other innovative nuclear technologies were advancing in labs at OSU and other American universities such as MIT and the University of California, Berkeley, plant construction in the U.S. was stalled. Concern about proliferation (radioactive materials getting into the hands of terrorists or rogue nations) led to a ban on fuel reprocessing in 1976. The leak at Three Mile Island and the meltdown at Chernobyl hardened fears. Meanwhile, other nations moved ahead. Today, France gets 80 percent of its power from nuclear. Japan is at 30 percent. The U.S. is at 20 percent, a proportion that China, now at 2 percent, aspires to attain within 20 years.

In China, where cities are bursting at the seams and infrastructure is racing to catch up, the urgent need for power simply outstrips worries about nuclear accidents, explains Wu, a native of China. And then there’s the environment. China’s heavy reliance on coal is choking crowded urban areas.

“The pollution is devastating,” 
says Wu.

Indeed, pollution – more precisely, carbon dioxide and other fossil-fuel emissions – is at the heart of the nuclear-energy renaissance gathering momentum here and abroad. Greenhouse gases pose a threat to Planet Earth that dwarfs the danger of nuclear power, many scientists and environmentalists have concluded. In that context, nuclear energy is being revisited as an important clean, green alternative, along with wind and solar, because it can produce great quantities of energy and emit relatively little carbon dioxide.

“Global warming is the new touchstone for the nuclear debate,” says OSU nuclear engineering Professor Todd Palmer. “A lot of former anti-nukes are now rallying around it. They’ve realized the value of the technology.”

As the Earth warms, rising seas, failing crops, dwindling water supplies and slumping economies will hit the poorest peoples soonest and hardest, experts agree. Nuclear power could boost living standards in developing nations – thereby easing their adaptation to changing conditions – without adding to the problem by spewing harmful gases into the atmosphere, advocates argue.

“It is abundantly clear that countries with affordable electricity have citizens who live longer,” says Palmer. “In study after study, quality of life is directly tied to cheap, abundant power. I tell my students that anything we can do to make nuclear technology more readily available to everybody is a humanitarian effort.”

Nuclear Niche

Last winter, OSU nuclear engineer Qiao Wu trained Chinese engineers in the operation of the Westinghouse AP1000 plant. Behind him are DongJian Zhao (left), Shanghai Nuclear Energy Research and Development Institute, and Professor Hanyang Gu, Shanghai Jiaotong University. (Photo: Karl Maasdam)

OSU is in the vanguard of the rebirth. Its Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics, whose enrollment has doubled since 2004, came in eighth (behind Michigan, MIT, Wisconsin, Texas A&M, Penn State, Berkeley and North Carolina State) in last year’s U.S. News and World Report’s college rankings. However, its research niche – safety – has earned it an international reputation that transcends the national ranking (which department Chair José Reyes points out is weighted heavily on statistical criteria such as numbers of students and faculty). In 2004, Reyes led a 14-nation United Nations research program in Vienna to lay out a worldwide vision for nuclear reactors that are “passively safe.” His year with this nuclear brain trust inspired and energized him.

“It really gave me a global perspective,” says Reyes. “There’s a tremendous need for power in developing nations.”

By using standardized designs that are pre-licensed and replicable (versus designing a unique plant for each site), emerging technologies can dramatically cut construction costs. While old-era plants went up at a snail’s pace (seven to 10 years), new designs can be built in half the time. Utility companies can begin recouping their investments years earlier. Eyeing the quicker turnaround, U.S. companies have ordered at least half a dozen AP1000s for projects over the next decade.

Like older plants such as Oregon’s Trojan (connected to the grid in 1975, decommissioned in 1993, demolished in 2006), the AP1000 is a pressurized light-water reactor. That is, it uses ordinary H2O to cool the core, where pellets of uranium dioxide are stacked. The difference is that those old plants employed manmade mechanisms (valves and pumps), while the new design relies on natural forces (gravity, convection, evaporation and condensation) to shut down and cool the reactor during an accident. For 72 hours, no human action is needed. The flawed-operator nightmare (a doughnut-sated Homer Simpson snoozing at the controls of the fictional Springfield Nuclear Power Plant) is thus vanquished.

“The human element is often the weak link in reactor safety,” notes Palmer.

Another study could lead to better monitoring through remote sensing with an “antineutrino detector.” Alex Misner of Beaverton, Oregon, one of Palmer’s graduate students, is collaborating with researchers at Lawrence Livermore and Sandia National Laboratories to distinguish normal operations from the abnormal use of a reactor for weapons material production. Down the road, the finding could lead to closer monitoring of nuclear activity in friendly – or unfriendly – nations.

Small Is Beautiful

Jose Reyes is taking OSU's small-scale, passively safe technologies global through the Corvallis-based spinoff company, NuScale Power. Reyes holds the Henry W. and Janice J. Schuette Chair in Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics. (Photo: Karl Maasdam)

The future of nuclear also comes down to a question of scale, and on that issue, pending certification, OSU technology is already moving into the international marketplace via NuScale Power. This OSU spinoff company, headquartered in downtown Corvallis, is developing compact, portable reactors that can be manufactured in the Henry Ford tradition, on an assembly line, then placed right where they’re needed, singly or in clusters. About the size of a single-wide mobile home, the 300-ton units can be hauled by truck, barge or train. As local demand grows, communities can add new units. For developing nations, when the fuel is spent, the module is replaced, tightly monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency. With current technology, the fuel will last for two years. This “distributed energy” model – ideal for remote locales (the Alaska bush, for instance) and small communities (especially in developing countries) – obviates the need for stringing power lines to a central grid.

Reyes, chief technology officer for NuScale, and CEO Paul Lorenzini, former president of PacificCorp (owner of Pacific Power) with an OSU Ph.D. in nuclear engineering, are scouting U.S. manufacturers and seeking customers across the globe. “It’s exciting,” says Reyes. “You lay out a map of the country and they say, ‘This is where we need power.’”

The 12-module design, developed and tested in Reyes’ lab, is now in the pre-application phase of the complex certification gauntlet. NuScale principals meet quarterly with the NRC, the agency that confers what Reyes calls the international “gold standard” of official approval. Data show a steep spike in safety for compact, passive reactors compared with conventional reactors. “Our risk study showed that the probability of an accident is more than extremely low; it’s remarkably low,” says Reyes.

Shrinking a passive design into moveable modules, encasing them in dual steel chambers and submerging them in a pool 65 feet beneath the earth pushes the chance of an accident almost off the charts, according to Reyes. “It’s really a very, very robust design,” he says. “I would describe it as a reactor inside a thermos bottle underwater, underground. On top of that you have a big, concrete lid. All of those serve as barriers to releasing radiation.”

Comfort Zone

Brent Matteson, a Ph.D. student in nuclear chemistry, works in Assistant Professor Alena Paulenova's Laboratory of Transuranic Elements. A fellow of the Civil Radioactive Waste Management Program of the U.S. Department of Energy, he studies the chemical behavior of neptunium. (Photo: Karl Maasdam)

With nuclear technology surging forward, some of the old fears are fading. “For a long time, the biggest challenge we’ve had is public acceptance of the technology,” says Palmer. “But younger generations are so much more comfortable with technology and so much more reliant on electricity for everything they use, from cell phones to PDAs to Xboxes. They’re also so much more environmentally conscious. Those two things are coming together to really help people understand the value of nuclear technology.”

Adds OSU nuclear engineer Brian Woods: “Tom Brokaw always talks about the World War II generation as the ‘greatest generation.’ Well, I believe the current generation of students will be the greatest generation because they’ll be the ones to solve the world’s energy crisis – and maybe even save the planet.”

Click here to watch an OSU Frontiers interview with Jose Reyes.

For more information about nuclear power research at OSU:

New Company, Reactor Design May Boost Nuclear Energy, July 8, 2008

Conference to Advance “Passively-Safe” Nuclear Future, August 23, 2005

Support nuclear research through the OSU Foundation

U.S. Department of Energy

Oregon leaders on both sides of the political aisle struck a unified note last January, calling on scientists and entrepreneurs to step up R&D in alternative energy technologies.

At the annual statewide economic summit in Portland, Governor Ted Kulongoski challenged the state to be “a leader in bringing energy independence to America.” Both U.S. senators voiced strong agreement. Democrat Ron Wyden vowed to lead an effort to make Oregon “the green-energy capital of the world” by investing in forest biomass technology. And Republican Gordon Smith noted that the development of alternative fuels is “absolutely essential to our nation’s future.”

Alternative energy sources can be found in places as plentiful as seawater and as ordinary as corn. The challenge is to capture and convert those natural stores of energy efficiently and economically. To that end, OSU got a considerable boost in 2004 when it was named one of the nation’s five Sun Grant Centers by the federal Sun Grant Initiative for “bioenergy” — power derived from living organisms or their byproducts. As the lead university for a nine-state region, OSU will use its four-year, $8 million grant to develop technologies for turning agricultural products into clean, renewable fuels.

Meanwhile, in labs across campus — from microbiology to nanotechnology, chemistry and engineering — OSU’s energy studies are already yielding important findings. Research on two of the Pacific Northwest’s most bountiful untapped resources — ocean waves and forest biomass — were featured in the last issue of Terra (Spring 2006). Here, we take readers inside some of OSU’s other leading endeavors in the “green” revolution.

Powered by Canola

Biodiesel is free of the metals and harmful chemicals that plague petroleum products — so free, in fact, that it is “essentially harmless to the environment,” notes OSU chemical engineering professor Goran Jovanovic. “If it spills on soil or in waterways, nature will take care of it in a few days.”

A blend of alcohol (ethanol or methanol) and oil from food plants such as canola or soy, biodiesel offers a nonpolluting option for powering not only cars and trucks, but also boats, chainsaws, lawnmowers and recreational vehicles such as four-wheelers and snowmobiles. It also promises to open lucrative new markets to farmers.

But there’s a roadblock to widespread use: production methods that are slow, inefficient and energy intensive. So Jovanovic and a team of researchers affiliated with the Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute (ONAMI) are pioneering a way to manufacture biodiesel that is not only fast and streamlined, but also portable.

In contrast to biorefineries, where big batches are stirred in giant vats for hours, Jovanovic and his fellow scientists can make the fuel in 10 minutes or less by using microtechnology. Here’s how it works: Thirty parallel channels — 100 microns wide, about the width of a human hair — are etched into a plastic plate smaller than a credit card. Thin streams of alcohol and oil are injected into each “microchannel.” Because the alcohol and oil molecules are in close contact all along the channel, the chemical reaction that turns them into biodiesel happens 100 times faster than it does in the macroscopic reactors typically used in large refineries. Thousands of the microchannels stacked side-by-side to create a microreactor the size of a suitcase could produce one million gallons of biodiesel a year.

Jovanovic envisions small farmers producing biodiesel right beside their canola fields — or even consumers whipping up personal-sized batches of biofuels in microchannel reactors available online or at the local big-box store. Freed from dependence on giant power companies and oil-rich countries, Jovanovic says, “Every single person would be empowered to produce energy for themselves.”

Harnessing Hydrogen

Oceans and freshwater lakes contain an ancient class of microscopic organisms that could be the holy grail of hydrogen production: cyanobacteria.

To power a new generation of clean energy systems, OSU bioengineers are studying ways to harness hydrogen from these super-abundant microbes. Formerly called “blue-green algae” because of their plant-like ability to harvest sunlight, cyanobacteria use solar energy not only to make life-sustaining sugars — they also can make hydrogen. Roger Ely and Frank Chaplen are researching ways to tap that fuel source for tomorrow’s commuters, homeowners and businesses.

Their work centers on overcoming a stumbling block: oxygen. Cyanobacteria stop making hydrogen when oxygen is present. So, with $900,000 from the U.S. Department of Energy, the team hopes to develop a new capability in these photosynthetic bacteria — “oxygen tolerance.” Once the researchers solve the oxygen puzzle, cyanobacteria could eliminate the biggest barrier to affordable hydrogen production — fossil fuels. Most hydrogen today is produced from petroleum. Besides adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, the net energy gain is negligible. If OSU’s engineers can exploit the cycle of one of Earth’s oldest, most plentiful organisms, hydrogen could make gasoline obsolete.

Calling cyanobacteria the “ideal energy device” because they are non-toxic and low-cost, Ely believes that eons of evolution and adaptation can help us learn how to capture and convert solar energy. “Nature,” he says, “has worked this out so well.”

Nuclear Renaissance

OSU’s recent breakthroughs in reactor safety signal the rebirth of an industry long dogged by the risk of radioactive leaks.

An international leader in the development of failsafe ways to extract energy from atoms, Professor José Reyes has for a decade been steering the design of nuclear reactors that reduce risk through simplicity. The valves, pumps and pipes that operate older plants mechanically are replaced by natural forces — gravity, convection, evaporation and condensation — that, in case of an accident, cool the core “passively.”

“We’re moving toward a new safety culture in the development of nuclear power,” says Reyes, who directed a 14-nation research program on passive nuclear technology at the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna in 2004. Recently certified by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, one new-era model tested at OSU for Westinghouse could be under construction in a few years, he predicts. Known as the AP-1000, it has been selected for six new nuclear power projects announced in the last year by U.S. energy utilities.

One of the ultra-safe reactors on OSU’s drawing board is a compact modular unit that can be sealed up and loaded onto a train for transport. Requiring no onsite fueling, it poses a near-zero risk for leaks. When buried safely in underground silos, these self-contained reactors could help fill worldwide demand for small-scale, portable energy systems. Another planned model has the potential to be a double-duty renewable. It operates at ultra-high temperatures, actually “cracking” water molecules to free up hydrogen. By making hydrogen at the same time it generates electricity, the thermal reactor could light houses and fuel cars, cleanly and cheaply.

Reyes is the first holder of the Henry W. and Janice J. Schuette Chair in the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics at OSU.

Blowin’ in the Wind

When it blows strong and steady, wind is a cost-effective energy source. To guide decisions on wind-farm development, many Northwest agencies, developers and farmers rely on OSU’s long-term “wind feasibility” studies and research.

An early frontrunner in wind research, OSU’s Energy Resources Research Laboratory (ERRL) specializes in assessing wind-power potential for private and public landowners. One community sizing up its wind power is the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in central Oregon. Whether tribal lands are windy enough to justify investment in a large-scale commercial wind farm is the subject of a five-year study commissioned by Warm Springs Power Enterprises. The university is also partnering with Bonneville Power Administration on a wind forecasting/integration study and with the Oregon Energy Trust, loaning anemometers to electricity customers of Portland General Electric and Pacific Power who want to measure the wind potential of their home or business.

For wind to become a “prominent and dependable” energy resource in the region, reliable ways of predicting and measuring wind are critical, says Stel Walker, professor of mechanical engineering and ERRL director. “This is very important in the Pacific Northwest,” he notes, “where the region’s complex topography has a strong influence on the strength and variation of the wind.”

Catching Some Rays

Using furnaces as hot as 1,700 degrees centigrade, OSU chemists and engineers are forging novel compounds that could give new life to the solar energy industry. Their research into advanced solar-cell materials — ones that absorb more light, produce higher voltage and work more efficiently — holds promise for an exponential expansion of sun-based power generation.

“Most of the solar technologies in use today date back at least 25 years,” says Douglas Keszler, Department of Chemistry chair. “The cells you put on your roof are only about 10 percent efficient. We’re looking for high-performance materials with at least 25 percent efficiency.”

With funding from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Keszler and electrical engineering professor John Wager are investigating oxides as the “optimal materials” to replace yesterday’s solar-cell mainstays — silicon (capturing only a limited light spectrum), cadmium telluride (hazardous to the environment), and copper indium diselenide (scarce and expensive).

When Keszler looks into the future of solar energy, he doesn’t see millions of rooftops sporting solar panels, installed and maintained by homeowners. Rather, he imagines neighborhoods drawing electricity from nearby “solar farms,” built and operated by local power companies.

“There’s so much solar energy available,” says Keszler. “One peak hour of sun shining on the U.S. provides enough energy to power the whole world for a year. It’s incredible to me that the world’s solar program isn’t 10 times its current size.”