The central topic of this seminar is modeling approaches to facilitate resource conservation and a just energy transition. Potential subtopics are an emerging technology’s potential for scaling, life-cycle assessment for measuring social and environmental impacts, uncertainty quantification, and economic modeling for the energy transition. Our goal is to create an intimate, collaborative space for students, postdocs, scientists, and PIs within the Stanford techno-economic modeling and systems modeling community. These seminars will provide an opportunity to disseminate insights from your studies, connect with fellow researchers, and strengthen bonds across the community.

This week's speaker is:

Alicia Wongel, Postdoctoral Fellow at Carnegie Science
"Conceptual Modeling of Energy Systems"

Alicia is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Carnegie Science, where she joined Ken Caldeira’s group in 2023. She has a doctoral degree in physics from the University of Hamburg, Germany. In her doctoral research, she analyzed particle physics data and built mechanical components for CERN. For her postdoc, she wanted to work on big-picture energy and climate-related problems in an interdisciplinary setting and, therefore, joined the Climate Energy lab.

In this talk, Alicia will give an overview of the different energy system analyses that have been done recently in the Climate Energy lab. These studies are based on highly stylized systems that allow drawing fundamental conclusions about geophysical and technical relationships. Many of the studies aim to give a first-order impression of a problem, leaving follow-up studies with higher detail for future research. Recent studies related to energy systems focused on the role of different energy technologies that could complement wind and solar generation and planning reliable wind- and solar-based electricity systems.

Due to high interest, please sign up only if you’re certain you can attend. RSVP is required to reserve lunch.