Tomas Cebecauer is an expert in solar resource assessment, satellite remote sensing, geoinformatics, meteorology, and photovoltaic electricity modelling. He has received PhD in geography and geoinformatics, and is co-author of more than 70 scientific publications. He is one of authors of the decision support online system PVGIS, which notably contributed to development of photovoltaics in Europe.
He is technical director of GeoModel Solar. He has key role in technical development and operation of global online system SolarGIS, which delivers solar resource and meteo data, and software services for planning, monitoring and forecasting of solar power. Tomas Cebecauer is principal author of the high-accuracy satellite-based solar model implemented in SolarGIS. He pursues collaboration with world leading experts in the development of methods for solar resource modelling, data quality control and real-time operational delivery at a global scale.
Chi Wai Chow is a PhD student in Professor Kleissl’s Solar Resource Assessment and Forecasting Lab. Chow researchers computer vision tools for sky image motion detection and segmentation.
Carlos F. M. Coimbra is an Associate Professor at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, San Diego. Coimbra directs the Solar Power Forecasting Initiative across multiple campus of the University of California system, where he manages a network of high-quality solar observatories dispersed through the Pacific Rim. Coimbra’s research on integrated solar-load forecasting aims at developing hybrid methodologies that blend stochastic learning and physics-based models. He teaches courses in Radiative Transfer, Thermodynamics and Experimental Methods at UCSD. Funding for his research at UCSD is provided by NSF, CEC, CPUC, CITRIS and DOD.
Craig Collier joined GL Garrad Hassan in 2007, after completing a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Atmospheric Sciences at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. For the past five years, he has managed short-term forecasting operations for the company’s North American market, supervising an interdisciplinary team of atmospheric scientists and engineers that provides utilities, independent power producers, energy traders, and system operators with forecasting services for diverse facilities across a variety of terrains and meteorological regimes, including two of the five largest wind plants in the United States. Dr. Collier is a member of
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the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Wind Energy Association, the American Solar Energy Society, and the Utility Variable Generation Integration Group. Collier received a PhD in Atmospheric Science from Texas A&M University in 2004.
Steven J. Fletcher is a research scientist III at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA) at Colorado State University. Since 2004, he has worked on non-Gaussian variational and ensemble data assimilation, and since 2010 he has organized a session at the American Geophysical Union’s annual fall meeting on nonlinear and non-Gaussian data assimilation. As well as non-Gaussian data assimilation, Dr. Fletcher’s research involves data fusion, preconditioning, control-variable transforms, and background-error modeling. He obtained his Ph. D. in mathematics in 2004 from the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, where his Ph. D. subject was higher-order nonlinear balance decomposition for data assimilation.
Mohamed Ghonima is Ph. D. student in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Mohamed’s research focuses on image processing techniques for cloud detection and aerosol characterization using ground based all-sky imagers. Mohamed also has extensive experience with the hardware development of the all-sky imagers at UCSD. Mohamed received British Petroleum’s (BP) Performance Award in 2011.
Catherine N. Grover has nearly 20 years of experience in the energy industry, including renewable energy, and oil and gas. She also has substantial experience in managing and leading advisory and independent engineering services in support of the development and financing of power and energy projects. Currently, Ms. Grover leads Luminate, LLC’s solar-energy practice. She holds a B. S. in chemical engineering from the University of Tulsa, where she graduated with honors
Andrew K. Heidinger is a physical scientist with the NOAA/NESDIS Center for Satellite Applications and Research at the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies (CIMSS) in Madison, Wisconsin. He also serves as an adjunct professor in the University of Wisconsin’s Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Department. Dr. Heidinger’s research focuses on cloud remote sensing for future, current, and historical sensors, and he has published in the areas of satellite calibration and radiative-transfer modeling. He earned his B. S. in mechanical engineering from Purdue University and his M. S and Ph. D. in atmospheric science from Colorado State University.
Detlev Heinemann is a meteorologist and head of the the Energy and Semiconductor Research Laboratory’s Energy Meteorology Group at the University of Oldenburg. The focus of the group is the influence of weather and climate on
energy-supply systems under the constraint of increasing contributions from solar – and wind-energy conversion. Within this field, Dr. Heinemann’s research interests are wind – and solar-power forecasting, wind-resource modeling on various scales, and satellite-based surface solar-irradiance estimation. He has managed numerous national and international research projects related to energy meteorology. Heinemann received a Diploma in Meteorology from the University of Kiel in 1983 and a PhD in Physics at the University of Oldenburg in 1990.
Tomas E. Hoff is the founder of Clean Power Research and President of its Research and Consulting Group. Tom’s research is proving vital to utilities and ISOs, who are faced with the challenge of maintaining reliability while integrating ever-increasing levels of PV generation on the grid. His numerous research topics include: valuation of photovoltaics and distributed generation, risk management and renewables and, most recently, methods to characterize PV output variability. Tom began his career at Pacific Gas and Electric Company. He holds a Ph. D. in Engineering-Economic Systems from Stanford University’s School of Engineering.
Andrew S. Jones is a senior research scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA) at Colorado State University. He has received six academic merit scholarships/fellowships and has more than 380 publications, reports, and presentations in satellite data assimilation, multisensor- satellite data-merger techniques, satellite spatial filters, satellite retrievals for determining soil moisture, radiometric boundary conditions, and microwave detection of cloud liquid water and surface properties over land. Dr. Jones is the principal investigator on several satellite data-assimilation and advanced data – processing projects. He received his B. S. in physics with a minor in mathematics summa cum laude with university honors from Eastern Illinois University, and his M. S. and Ph. D. in atmospheric science from Colorado State.
Jan Kleissl is an Associate Professor at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, San Diego, and Associate Director of the Center for Energy Research. Kleissl received a PhD from the Johns Hopkins University in Environmental Engineering and joined UC San Diego in 2006. Kleissl supervises 16 PhD students who work on solar power forecasting and solar grid integration work funded by CPUC, CEC, NREL, and DOE. Kleissl teaches classes in Renewable Energy Meteorology, Fluid Mechanics, and Laboratory Techniques. Kleissl received the 2009 National Science Foundation CAREER award and the 2008 UC San Diego Sustainability award.
Ben Kurtz is a PhD student in the Dept. of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Ben’s current research focuses on solar forecasting using ground-based sky images. Ben received a BS in Physics from Caltech.
Jan Kuhnert is a postgraduate student in the Energy and Semiconductor Research Laboratory’s Energy Meteorology Group at the University of Oldenburg. He received his diploma degree in physics in 2011. His Ph. D. thesis, funded by the Scholarship Programme of the German Federal Environmental Foundation, is on photovoltaic power forecasts for the energy market.
Matthew Lave is a Senior Member of the Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories working in the Photovoltaics and Grid Integration department. Matthew received his PhD in Aerospace Engineering from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), where his research focused on variability analysis of solar radiation and solar PV powerplants. Through his PhD work, Matthew developed the wavelet variability model (WVM), which models the variability of solar PV powerplants at various timescales of interest to operation of the electric grid using only an irradiance point sensor as input. He is currently working on examining solar variability impacts to the electric grid and PV systems modeling.
Vincent E. Larson is an atmospheric scientist with 13 years of experience, mostly in the area of numerical modeling of clouds. He has published 30 articles in the peer-reviewed literature. Larson received a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a BA in Physics from Yale University.
Elke Lorenz is a member of of the Energy and Semiconductor Research Laboratory’s Energy Meteorology Group at at the University of Oldenburg Her research focus is solar irradiance and photovoltaic-power forecasting and methods to derive solar irradiance from satellite data. Since the beginning of 2011, Dr. Lorenz has headed the Energy Meteorology Group’s solar team. She received her diploma degree in physics from the University of Oldenburg, where she also completed her Ph. D. thesis on the application of satellite-image cloud-motion vectors to short-term solar-radiation forecasting.
Ricardo Marquez received his Ph. D. degree in 2012 from the University of California, Merced, where he worked on the development of several solar forecasting methods for a wide range of temporal horizons under the supervision of Prof. Coimbra. He is now a post-doctoral fellow at UC Merced, where he continues to develop his research on radiative heat transfer. Dr. Marquez’s research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the California Energy Commission, the Center for Information Technology in the Interest of Society (CITRIS), the Eugene Cotta-Robles and the Southern California Edison fellowship programs.
Patrick Mathiesen is a senior doctoral student at the University of California, San Diego, and a member of Jan Kleissl’s Solar Resource Assessment and Forecasting Laboratory. His research interests include numerical weather
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prediction and the application of meteorology to the renewable-energy industry. Mr. Mathiesen received his B. S. in mechanical engineering in 2009 from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.
Andrew C. McMahan is a manager with Luminate, LLC, where he provides advisory services in support of solar-energy project development and financing. He has spent nearly a decade in the solar industry and was previously co-founder and vice president of SkyFuel, Inc., a startup developer of parabolic-trough concentrating solar-power technology. Mr. McMahan holds a B. S. in mechanical engineering from Oregon State University and a M. S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
Steven D. Miller is a satellite meteorologist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in the Atmosphere (CIRA) at Colorado State University. His research interests lie in satellite remote sensing and satellite meteorological applications, and he has worked with a wide assortment of passive and active satellite datasets. His specific expertise is in the design of physically based and value – added products entailing mineral dust, volcanic ash, cloud properties, fog detection, fire detection, and nighttime low-light visible imagery. Dr. Miller serves as an applied-research liaison to operational users of satellite datasets. He received received his B. S. in electrical and computer engineering from the University of California, San Diego, and his M. S. and Ph. D. in atmospheric science from Colorado State.
Dung (Andu) Nguyen is a PhD student at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the Univerity of California, San Diego (UCSD). Andu received his M. S. and B. S. in Electrical Engineering from the Catholic University of America in 2011. Andu’s research focuses on Solar Forecasting, Distribution System Power Simulation, Control Theory for Grid Integration of Renewable Resources and Storage Systems, and Economics of Renewable Energy. His current projects include short-term solar forecasting with whole sky imagers and impact of high PV penetration on distribution system.
Hugo T. C. Pedro is a post-doctoral fellow in Coimbra’s Solar Forecast Engine group at the University of California, San Diego. He is responsible for the development and implementation of stochastic learning and pattern recognition techniques into research and operational forecasts for the research team. Dr. Pedro main expertise is in evolutionary optimization and pattern recognition. He has developed a number of methodologies applicable to image processing and time series analysis of solar irradiance, power output, and demand load. Dr. Pedro joined Prof. Coimbra’s group shortly after receiving his Ph. D. degree from the University of Hawaii-Manoa in 2010. His research is funded by the National Science Foundation.
Richard Perez is a Research Professor at the University at Albany’s Atmospheric Sciences Research Center, where he directs applied research in the fields of solar radiation, and solar energy applications, and daylighting. He holds a Master and a Doctorate in Atmospheric Sciences (University of Paris and SUNY-Albany) and an Undergraduate Degree in Electrotechnics (University of Nice, France). His noted contributions to the field of solar energy are:
• Identifying the high value potential of photovoltaic power generation to meet the electrical power demand of large cities in non-traditional solar regions such as the northeastern United States.
• The development of solar radiation models which have been incorporated in standard solar energy and daylighting calculation practice around the world.
Perez sits on the Advisory Board of the GW Solar Institute at GW University in Washington, DC. He has served multiple terms on the board of the American Solar Energy Society (ASES).
He has produced over 250 book chapters, journal articles, conference papers and technical reports and holds two US patents on methods of load management using photovoltaics. He has directed research projects and contracts amounting to $6 million, and has received several international awards including a Certificate for Outstanding Research from the USDOE; ASES’ highest award: the Charles Greeley Abbot Award; and the First International Building and Daylight Award from the Velux Foundation in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Manajit Sengupta is a senior scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colorado. His current research focuses on various aspects of solar energy, including solar resource, forecasting, and variability. Dr. Sengupta’s areas of expertise include radiative transfer and remote sensing of clouds both from ground and satellite-based systems, as well as satellite data assimilation. He received his B. S. in physics from Presidency College, Calcutta, and his Ph. D. in meteorology from Pennsylvania State University.
Joshua Stein is a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories working in the area of Photovoltaics and Grid Integration. Dr. Stein’s specialty is modeling and analysis of complex natural and engineered systems, including assessments of uncertainty and sensitivity using stochastic methods. He currently develops and validates models of solar irra – diance, photovoltaic system performance, reliability, and PV interactions with the grid. He leads the PV Performance Modeling Collaborative (http://pvpmc. org). He has a Ph. D. from the University of California, Santa Cruz in Earth Sciences.
Tom Stoffel is an atmospheric scientist with over 37 years of research experience in solar radiation measurements, including the design, development and
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operation of the Solar Radiation Research Laboratory. The laboratory provides ISO 17025 accredited calibration of pyranometers and pyrheliometers and supports the NREL’s Measurement & Instrumentation Data Center providing nearly real-time access to solar resource data within the U. S. (www. nrel. gov/ midc). He began his professional career as an aerospace engineer at the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base Propulsion Laboratory, simulating gas turbine engine performance and infrared radiation signatures. He returned to school to pursue his interest in radiative transfer and atmospheric science. Upon graduation, he worked at what is now NOAA’s Earth System Research Laboratory to analyze urban-rural differences in solar radiation. In 1978, he began his career in renewable energy at the Solar Energy Research Institute (now NREL). For the past 13 years, he has managed a group of technical staff responsible for the collection, evaluation, and dissemination of solar resource data. Current research topics include solar resource variability for electricity generation, satellite remote sensing of surface irradiance for solar resource characterization, forecasting solar resources for electric utility operations, and improving solar radiometry and metrology practices for renewable energy applications and climate change studies. He has over 85 scientific publications on these topics and provides technical expertise to national and international research projects (www. nrel. gov/solar_radiation).
Marcel Suri is an expert in solar resource assessment, photovoltaic electricity modelling and performance assessment of solar energy technology. He has received PhD in geography and geoinformation science, and is co-author of more than 100 scientific publications. Marcel Suri is one of authors of the decision support online system PVGIS, which notably contributed to development of photovoltaics in Europe.
He is managing director of GeoModel Solar, the company which operates global online system SolarGIS, which delivers high-accuracy solar resource information, meteo data and software services for planning, monitoring and forecasting of solar power. Marcel Suri consults developers and operators of solar power plants, investors, banks and governmental institutions. He managed a number of R&D projects, and is active in the definition and market implementation of standards, which introduce better transparency and increase efficiency in solar energy.
Bryan Urquhart is an advanced Ph. D. student in Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, San Diego researching the solar resource with an emphasis on short-term solar forecasting using sky imagery. Prior to working with sky imagery, he used geostationary satellite data to estimate solar irradi – ance over California, which was the subject of his master’s thesis. Outside of academia Bryan worked for several years at the Aerospace Corporation aiding in the design and fabrication of infrared chemical cloud detection equipment for both flight and ground systems.
Frank E. Vignola has been actively involved in energy research for over 30 years. He consults as well as serves as senior research associate and director of the University of Oregon’s Solar Energy Center. Dr. Vignola has assisted in the validation of solar-resource and production projections for numerous utility-scale power projects. He is a fellow of the American Solar Energy Society (ASES) and is a recipient of the Oregon Solar Energy Industries Association’s Solar Legacy Award. He holds a Ph. D. in physics from the University of Oregon.
