4:11 p.m., April 24, 2008--Students, faculty and staff members representing three different renewable energy groups at UD displayed their projects, including UD's electric car and fuel cell bus, at Hagley Museum's “Power Up Gambia” day event, Sunday, April 20.

The groups included UD's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Solar Power Program and the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) Sustainable Energy from Solar Hydrogen program, as well as the Department of Mechanical Engineering's fuel cell group.

According to Morag Bremner, the IGERT program coordinator in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, seven UD faculty and staff members and 11 UD students were kept busy all day with demonstrations and presentations at the three stalls set up at the museum's Powder House.

“Turnout was pretty good and there was a steady flow all day,” Bremner said, “and because a key goal in our participation was to educate the public about various sources of renewable and sustainable energy and to show what UD was doing, it was good to have the exposure." She added that a talk by Ajay Prasad, professor of mechanical engineering at UD, titled “The Science Behind Fuel Cells and their Application to Automobiles,” drew a significant audience.

“All presenters had the same common aim--to look for solutions to the Earth's depleting fuel supply and to address concerns about global warming. And in the case of the IGERT, we concentrated on how a solution could be found using solar hydrogen,” Bremner said.

Bremner described the event as “an interdisciplinary collaborative sustainable effort” and said that UD's involvement grew from a contact made last November by a fundraising committee established by Kathryn Cunningham, a 21-year-old American college student who wanted to raise money to install solar panels in a Gambian hospital that had only limited access to electricity.

After visiting the hospital and seeing the dire medical consequences that resulted from sudden and curtailed power outages, Cunningham resolved to raise $300,000 to install solar panels that could provide continuous back-up power to the hospital. UD, Bremner said, was contacted to play a role at the Hagley event because of the institution's reputation for innovation and research in the area of sustainable energy.

Besides the free, family-oriented, educational event on Sunday, a fundraiser was held at Hagley Museum on the preceding Saturday night with the goal of raising $130,000 to add to the $170,000 already raised for the project, Bremner added. John Byrne, director of UD's Center for Energy and Environmental Policy, was one of the invited guests to the fundraiser, where he gave a talk titled “The Climate Change Exchange.”

“It was a big opportunity to go there and have a presence and take part in an event that showcased action and innovation at UD,” Bremner said. “The more research in the area of sustainable energy that gets promoted, the better chance we all will have of finding solutions for a sustainable future.”

Article by Becca Hutchinson
Photos by Kevin Quinlan, AS '05