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Justin 178 days ago
The nickname that has been given to Florida, the Sunshine State, is not exactly a catchy little slogan that is meant to attract tourists to the place. It has also worked for getting the attention of the University of Louisville, who had sent it’s president, professor and provost to Fort Myers hoping that he could work out a partnership in solar energy with the FGCU. The researchers in Louisville have been developing solar cells as well as panels at it’s Conn center for research on renewable energy & environmental stewardship. The problem here though is that the climate in North Kentucky is not very suitable for testing any systems that would run on the power of the sun.
Mahendra Sunkara, one of the chemical engineering professors & the interim director of this center said, “Florida has a lot more sunshine that Kentucky and this is why it will be much easier for us for conducting solar research here.” In the month of December, FGCU was able to activate it’s two mega watt solar farm that they are estimating is going to cut up to 18% from electricity bills around the state. Even though the production of energy is very important, the research angle has been considered as important by their President, Wilson Bradshaw.
In the spring, FGCU is planning to hire a well known scholar of renewable energy to help in coordinating green technology initiatives with them which will include solar and wind energy as well as bio fuels & environmental sustainability. This person is also supposed to help them to re-write science curriculum using green components & also over look the making of a research facility, off the campus. The faculty at FGCU, gets arounf $14 million every year in sponsored reasearch grants. Even this figure is no match to Louisville though which gets much more than $100 million every year. The Conn. center at Louisville has the support of the National Science Foundation, the state of Kentucky, the U.S. Army and the U.S. Department of Energy. Sunkara also mentioned that Louisville is going to be sending researchers that willl help FGCU in studying the cells and panels which will be most efficient for them as a part of their agreement.