The combination of good water resources and hilly terrains in many parts of the world (Update New York included) presents opportunities for developing local-scale hydroelectric projects. We are looking for highly motivated students to work on one of the following areas with a focus on New York State.
Micro-hydro in existing civil infrastructures: Students will select a town/city in New York to evaluation the feasibility of installing turbines in drinking water pipes to generate electricity.
Run-of-the-river micro-hydro potential in Tompkins County: EERL has conducted an initial study to to quantify the micro-hydro potential in Tompkins County (~88 MW). Students will improve the methodology (based on GIS and land-use regression), incorporate realistic constrains and more stream data.
Pumped storage hydro: Students will apply GIS tools to identify sites with suitable topology to construct pumped storage hydro. Cost-effective energy storage is critical to transitioning to a renewable future. One of Canary Islands is powered entirely by wind energy and pumped storage hydro.
Controlling water pumping to provide power systems services: Students will investigate the feasibility of intelligent control of water pumping (for drinking water, or waste water treatment, or the lake source cooling for Cornell) to provide frequency regulation, an important type of power system services for grid reliability.
Contact: Prof. Max Zhang, kz33@cornell.edu, 287 Grumman Hall, Energy and the Environment Research Laboratory (EERL)