Faculty Taught How to Use Resources at Professional Development Workshops

Members of the Energy Storage industry met on August 31^st to review and validate a set of Energy Storage Curriculum Resources developed by the ATRE team.  Ten representatives from companies such as GE Energy Storage and Johnson Controls participated in the 5-hour workshop held at Chabot College near Oakland, CA.
The resources are meant to provide community college faculty with presentation slides, reading materials, lesson plans, and activities needed to introduce the subject to their students in electrical, solar, construction, and architecture courses.  Read More →

Palmdale area students first United States team to win

The Phantom Soldiers team from Knight High School in Palmdale won the 2016 International UAV Competition, Airborne Delivery Challenge. The students competed among 39 teams from 7 different regions of the world, and became the first team from the United States to ever win. Their teacher, James Stockdale, accompanied them to Brisbane, Australia and was thrilled with their win and $5,000 prize. Read More →

UAV-UAS Courses Part of New Certificate and Degree Programs

As the drone industry continues to grow, students can now turn to Cypress College for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) classes that prepare them to become certified by the Federal Aviation Administration.

New Addition to the Aviation and Travel Careers Program

UAV-UAS classes are a new addition to the Aviation and Travel Careers Program at Cypress College. Instructor Ed Valdez spearheaded the effort to develop this new program, and was eager to become a certified drone pilot when the FAA finalized its regulations in August.
As a trained pilot with 35 years of flying experience, Valdez was able to easily pass the FAA exam, and after a couple of weeks received his license. Read More →

From Dronelife on October 21, 2016

In the world of drone conferences and shows, the Commercial UAV Expo stands out this year – demonstrating that businesses across sectors recognize that drones can be a valuable piece of their operating strategy. Read More →

From Dronelife on October 20, 2016

Getting the General Public to Begin Thinking

It took a tease and a bold prediction from Amazon’s Jeff Bezos to get the general public to begin thinking a couple of years ago about the ways in which drones might change the business landscape forever. But commercial drone companies were already far ahead of the game by that time, taking the new technology beyond familiar military and hobbyist uses.
Bezos, of course, was focused on the idea of using the unmanned devices as couriers of a sort, an efficient and economical way to deliver packages for his retail behemoth. Meanwhile, others were on a different path, envisioning and actualizing a wide array of uses for drones across industries, and developing a wide range of business models to make drones an integral part of industrial practices. Read More →

Frala and Rio Hondo to be honored at the 28th Annual Clean Air Awards in October

Professor John Frala and Rio Hondo College have been selected as joint winners of a South Coast Air Quality Management District Clean Air Award in the category of Clean Air Education and Outreach. This award honors visionaries in the region who made clean air contributions through innovation, leadership and exemplary service. Read More →

Students travel to Detroit to showcase custom-built fuel efficient vehicles

East Los Angeles College (ELAC) auto tech students took on the challenge to innovate, design, build and test fuel efficient vehicles for the Shell Eco-marathon competition. Nearly 130 teams from high schools and top universities from North America traveled to Detroit, MI to showcase their custom-built cars designed to be extra-energy-efficient. Read More →

The first semester of the college’s Bachelor of Science program is underway

Rio Hondo College is one of 15 community colleges offering a four-year degree by the 2017-18 academic year. Rio Hondo now offers a Bachelor of Science in Automotive Technology with two pathways: Business & Marketing and Technical. Read More →

Top trained technicians eligible to work at Audi dealerships nationwide

The General Automotive Technology Program at San Diego Miramar College has entered into a partnership agreement with Audi of America to become part of the Audi Education Partnership (AEP). The AEP will assist the College in the training of technicians who will be able to diagnose and repair some the most advanced luxury vehicles on the market. Read More →

New Home Solar Penetration Rate Now More Than 20 Percent in California

From Renewable Energy World on July 20, 2016

The California Energy Commission’s New Solar Homes Partnership (NSHP) program is helping to make new homes in California environmentally friendly, while reducing energy bills. The program, a component of the comprehensive California Solar Initiative (CSI), provides financial incentives and other support to builders, developers, and homeowners to encourage the construction of new, energy-efficient solar homes. The NSHP, which was launched in 2007, has a 10-year goal of installing 360 megawatts (MW) of new residential solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity in California. It aims to have at least half of all new homes include solar by 2020. As of January 2016, the program has installed or reserved funds for 141.8 MW of solar capacity. It has already helped boost the new home solar penetration rate in the state from less than 1 percent to more than 20 percent.

Maximum Efficiency, Maximum Impact

The NSHP focuses on new home construction as a way to lower the upfront installation costs of solar energy systems by incorporating these systems seamlessly into the design of a building and installing the PV system while all the other construction activities of the home are underway. The NSHP requires that projects meet minimum energy efficiency levels, which maximizes the project’s impacts: environmental benefits, market development, and cost savings for homeowners.
The NSHP’s performance-based incentives are based on the expected annual generation of the PV system weighted by its time-of-use value to the utility system. This encourages high-quality installations with optimal designs. To avoid incentivizing oversized systems, NSHP incentives are limited to the first 7.5 kilowatts (kW) of a PV system. The NSHP also takes into account and offers higher incentives for qualified affordable housing projects and for installations on buildings that achieve higher levels of energy efficiency.
NSHP incentives decline over time as cumulative MW capacity targets are reached. By allowing performance-based incentives to decrease alongside declining solar hardware costs, the NSHP maximizes the total number of incentivized solar systems and encourages the industry to rely less on incentives as solar costs fall and the market matures.
The Energy Commission has worked to administer the program efficiently and cost-effectively. The NSHP program may be one of the few solar rebate programs in California, if not the only one, that spends 100 percent of funds on solar system purchases and installation rather than subtracting 10 or 15 percent for administrative costs.

Market Development and Transformation

The NSHP program fosters a housing market in which builders routinely construct highly energy efficient homes and install solar energy systems as a standard feature. According to the California Building Industry Association, several major homebuilders began offering developments with solar as a standard feature in 2012, and “most, if not all . . . relied on NSHP incentive funding, which has provided key financial support in making a variety of business models work.” The program’s success has paved the way for cities, such as Lancaster and Sebastopol, to require solar on all new homes.
Read original article here.