Behrooz Parhami

Abstract: Renewable energy is gradually becoming cost-competitive, as we invest more in developing new production and storage technologies. The storage part is critical and needs significantly more effort. Production levels of renewable energy, solar and wind in particular, tend to be variable. Such supply variations, combined with natural variations in demand, give rise to the need for storing energy, in much the same way that we store grains in silos to smooth out the variations in when & where they are produced and when & where they are needed. In the case of grains, even year-to-year variations due to weather, pests, and natural disasters can be tolerated with sufficient storage capacity. There is no reason why similar smoothing methods cannot be used for energy. The fact that we have not been investing more in developing energy-storage technologies is a direct result of the “low cost” of energy derived from oil, gas, & coal and the exorbitantly-funded campaign by the fossil-fuel industry to brand renewable energy as “expensive.” However, most cost comparisons are unfair, because they ignore environmental and other indirect costs. Mitigating the effects of harmful emissions from burning fossil fuels is rather expensive, a figure we should include in their life-cycle cost. If we do so, the so-called “green premium” will vanish or even become negative.

Biography:

Speaker's bio: Behrooz Parhami (PhD, UCLA 1973) is Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and former Associate Dean for Academic Personnel, College of Engineering, at University of California, Santa Barbara, where he teaches and does research in computer arithmetic, parallel processing, and dependable computing. A Life Fellow of IEEE, a Fellow of IET and British Computer Society, and recipient of several other awards (including a most-cited paper award from J. Parallel & Distributed Computing), he has written six textbooks and more than 300 peer-reviewed technical papers. Professionally, he is an IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Visitor, serves on journal editorial boards and conference program committees, is passionate about puzzles, outreach efforts, & gender equity, and is active in technical consulting.

Address:California, United States