C-BEAR+ Fellows start (remote) guest stay at RLI
July 9th 2020 | Elena van Hove from Arizona State University and Jess Kersey from UC Berkeley have joined the Off-Grid Team on July 1st, as guest researchers in the transatlantic C-BEAR+ Program. Both have already participated in the RLI Summer School in summer 2019 and are now continuing their collaboration in the form of a one-year fellowship. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, they are currently working from home in the United States.
Scientific work focuses on electricity access in off-grid regions
Jess analyzes electricity access in informal urban settlements, focusing on the sizing, reliability and affordability of electricity. Her focus is on Latin American urban areas.
Elena deals with socio-economic success indicators of mini-grid projects. She focuses on productive use within mini-grids and investigates the demand and ability to pay of potential users and simulation tools for energy systems.
Successful German-American Research Cooperation in C-BEAR+
The C-BEAR+ Program (“California-Berlin Exchange and Research Plus”) aims to establish a research cooperation between RLI in Germany and various research institutions in the USA. The cooperation is intended to bundle the partners’ research efforts on the topic of “Universal access to sustainable energy” (as defined in SDG7) and thereby support the achievement of this development objective. A second goal is to strengthen transatlantic relations and contribute to intercultural exchange.
As part of C-BEAR+, young researchers have the opportunity to spend up to three months as a Fellow at one of the partner institutions. From RLI, Paul Bertheau has visited Arizona State University and Setu Pelz was a Fellow at Johns Hopkins University in early 2020.
C-BEAR+ continues until summer 2021
Further modules of C-BEAR+ included a scoping mission, which took place in the USA in 2019, joint workshops and conferences, as well as a summer school, which brought together young and experienced researchers from both countries in Berlin in 2019. The first publication and project ideas have already been developed here, some of which are currently being implemented. The program is currently planned to run until summer 2021.
The RLI is looking forward to a successful collaboration with Jess and Elena!
