By Patty Guerra, UC Merced News
A UC Merced team competing in a U.S. Department of Energy contest won its division with a proposal to use floating solar panels to power the campus’s Experimental Smart Farm.
The Solar District Cup is a collegiate competition that challenges teams to design and model distributed energy systems for a mixed-use campus or district – groups of buildings with a common electrical distribution feeder, according to the Department of Energy. Students work across disciplines such as engineering, finance, urban planning, sustainability and communications to reimagine how energy is generated, managed and used.
Nearly 70 teams from universities around the nation registered for the contest. UC Merced’s team emerged as one of six division winners; a team from Drexel University in Philadelphia won the final.