DEA 24W Young Alums in Energy Panel
DEA x Collis 23W Energy Trivia
Dartmouth Heating Plant Tour
Will Fraizer '78 Energy Guest Speaker
22W Stephen Doig Off-Grid House Tour (DEA x ESD): While the weather was cold, spirits were up!
22W Stephen Doig Off-Grid House Tour (DEA x ESD): Students toured the workshop lab, a design space for adding new features and capabilities into the Doigs’ home.
22W Stephen Doig Off-Grid House Tour (DEA x ESD): Students heard from Marion explaining how the lead battery storage system works, and also addressing the sustainability issues of using these batteries, as well as future potential for battery development.
22W Irving Institute Tour
“I’ll meet you in Irving.” The text sent, and I looked up on a sunny April afternoon in the Irving atrium; students chatting quietly, the sun seeping through the ceiling windows.
“This feels like a tech company office building,” I overheard the voice on my right shoulder.
“No way. It’s too cozy to be tech…it feels like the new ffb.”
“ffb” is the nickname for the well-loved first floor of the Berry building of the Baker-Berry library complex, where many Dartmouth students spend time working and collaborating.
Months before that pleasant April day, the Dartmouth Energy Alliance (DEA) partnered with the Irving Institute for Energy and Society during winter term 2022 to host a guided tour of the new building before it opened to students. On the tour, club members received a first hand look at the space and the energy efficient systems that make it possible.
Students saw the spaces like the Atrium and learned about the radiant heating and cooling system under the granite floor pictured below. The radiant heating and cooling pumps water beneath the granite to heat and cool the atrium space by leveraging water’s ability to resist changes in temperature.
Students also learned about the “double skin design of the building” which provides for heat recovery. Through the heat recovery system, stale, warm air passes through a heat exchanger that warms up the cold fresh air from outside, recovering energy from the air exhaust process. The double skin is visible in the building particularly in the kitchen where there is a double front pane of glass between the Irving Institute kitchen and Tuck Mall. Tour attendees also learned about the rooftop solar PV array which will produce up to 90 kW of power for the building and the grid. They saw the energy efficient operable windows which can be opened on-demand as well as managed by the building’s internal systems to provide cool air when needed.
The Irving Institute tour in January of 2022 exposed DEA members to Dartmouth’s new energy hub. Since the tour, students have gotten excited about the work of the Institute, engaging through Institute-driven programs and attending DEA meetings and programming.
Each day more students walk through the Atrium doors and feel the warmth of an innovative and exciting space for energy scholarship and collaboration at Dartmouth.
22W Young Alumni Career Panel
On Feb 8th, 2022, Dartmouth Energy Alliance hosted its first ever career panel with young alumni working in the energy industry. Reaching out to the DEA alumni network three years in the making, we were fortunate to bring three alumni, Meghan Duff ‘15, Stewart Wood ‘18, and Jordan Swett ‘19, to our students on campus via Zoom. Meghan works as an R&D project associate at Association for Energy Affordability Inc. Stewart is an investment associate at Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners. And Jordan Swett, one of the founding members of the DEA, is a senior finance associate at Sunwealth. Working in different parts of the renewable energy supply chain, our three panelists brought diverse perspectives into the discussion.
From an equity investor perspective, Stewart spoke about the cutting edge of energy infrastructure development and technologies that worldwide investments are chasing after, including offshore wind, energy storage, and data center. Besides being a traditionally safe asset class that generates steady cash flows, he says, renewable energy projects are providing competitive returns, mostly thanks to policy support including ITCs and PTCs.
Similar policy support can be found in the renewable energy technology R&D investment and buildings energy efficiency improvement efforts, Meghan said. That support, however, varies drastically between states. California, for example, is funding a lot of research and buildings retrofit projects to achieve the emission reduction goal it set for itself. For Meghan, the public sector is the driving force behind the clean energy transition and an area she encourages students to consider as young professionals.
Combining experience in both project development and project finance, Jordan gave an overview of the renewable energy supply chain. He walked us through the competing interests and different considerations coming from investors, project developers, utility companies, grid operators, and regulators. He talked about recent developments in each area and encouraged students to explore different industries within the renewable energy space.
Upcoming events.
From tours of the Dartmouth heating system, to internship networking sessions, this page contains all of the latest information on DEA meetings and events.
In addition to the information provided here, please visit Irving.Dartmouth.edu for more general, community-wide programming.