Over 150 attendees came together on May 1 for the second annual UNH Energy Conference. The conference, held in the MUB, focused on energy technology, policy, and economics. The conference was sponsored by the UNH Parent's association, the UNH Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Ellison Software Consulting, and Harold Davis.
Jacob Aho started the Energy Club in October, after he got the idea at the 2008 UNH Energy Conference.
"The idea behind the club would be to bring together students interested in energy and to educate ourselves about pertinent issues from a holistic point of view via seminars, trips, and interacting with other students and faculty on campus," said Aho, an electrical engineering graduate student and the president of the club.
The conference's morning session, held in the Strafford Room, focused on policy, economics, and utilities. It began with an opening address from keynote speaker Nick d'Arbeloff, president of the New England Clean Energy Council. Other morning speakers included representatives from the Public Service of New Hampshire, the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission, and the New Hampshire Office of Energy and Planning.
Those in attendance also took advantage of the coffee and lunch breaks to talk closely with the presenters.
"Many of the attendees enjoyed the small breaks and utilized them to network," said Aho. "We plan on making next year's conference more interactive with even more time for networking. We hope to delve even deeper on the policy end of things next year, maybe having some legislators at a round table discussion."
During the afternoon session, presentations in the Strafford Room focused on large-scale generation technologies. This included lectures on Coos County Wind Park by Noble Environmental Power, hydropower by Rockhouse Mountain Energy, nuclear energy by Seabrook Station, biomass generation by Clean Power Development, and ECOLine, UNH's landfill gas-to-energy project.
Also in the afternoon, the MUB Theater 2 hosted four presentations on homeowner scale technologies. Speakers focused on renewable energy, solar energy systems, home made wind energy, and energy efficiency during this part of the day. Aho said that this section on homeowner technologies, as well as the presentations by the New England Clean Energy Council and Public Utilities Commission were the highlights of the conference.
The UNH Energy Club will be hosting its last event of the semester, Free Movie Night Wednesday, on May 6 at 6 p.m. in MUB Theater 2. There will be free snacks and drinks, and like all Energy Club events, no prior knowledge of energy is needed. For more information, visit the Energy Club's official website at http://unhenergyclub.com/. The club is an affiliate of the Collegiate Energy Association and was named UNH's "new student organization of the year."
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