RESSCW: Renewable Energy & Sustainability at the Santa Cruz Wharf Who We Are: RESSCW is a student run project through the UCSC IDEASS (Impact Designs: Engineering and Sustainability through Student Service) program, funded by Learn and Serve Higher Education. The major goal is to increase sustainable development and public awareness of various sustainability efforts, starting with the experimentation of renewable energy systems and building an interpretive sign on the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf. The project aims to promote sustainable practices among the wharf businesses with the hope of making the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf a leader in the Monterey Bay region of renewable energy. The students who make up RESSCW are Shawn McEachin, Jake Adee, and Kathleen Manza. They are all students in the IDEASS program instructed by James Barsimantov and Tamara Ball. Kurt Almeida is a senior electrical engineering student who helped during the course of the project, but ended the year working on his own oscillating water column. The faculty mentor was James Barsimantov, course instructor and environmental studies professor, and the agency mentor was Kenneth “Kip” Laws, electrical engineering professor. The students also worked very closely with Tiffany Wise-West, an environmental studies PhD student at UCSC who was responsible for the various permits and the liaison for the interpretive sign. Others involved include John Vesecky, electrical engineering department chairman, Brent Haddad, environmental studies professor, Jon Bombaci, wharf supervisor, and Ross Clark, climate change action coordinator. The Bigger Picture: The need for renewable energy sources is becoming an increasingly important topic, as our supply of fossil fuels remain finite and are being depleting in an unsustainable manner. The City of Santa Cruz recognizes the importance of non-fossil fuel energy sources and drafted the Climate Action Plan setting forth the goal of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions back 30% by 2020 and 80% by 2050. That is exactly what RESSCW will help accomplish. By analyzing the potential for harvesting renewable energy from wind and solar irradiance, the interns can predict how much GHG emissions can be offset by using wind turbines and solar panels. What We Are Testing For and How We Are Testing For It: On top of the Wharf Headquarters Building is a test bed that contains two sensors: an anemometer that records information on wind speed and wind direction as a function of time of the day and a pyranometer that records information on solar irradiance as a function of time of the day. The data is sent to a PC-104 that records the raw data and makes graphs of wind speed, wind direction, and solar irradiance as a function of time of the day. By the end of June, there will be a vertical axis wind turbine and solar panel installed to determine the actual amount of energy that can be captured by those systems. Why We Find This Data Useful: Through data collection, analysis, and comparison, the intended outcome of this project is to determine the feasibility of harvesting renewable energy in coastal environments using local on-site data that would act as a model for other coastal communities. Ideally there will be a year’s worth of data to compile the most accurate report on how much energy can be produced with the best combination of vertical axis wind turbines and solar panels. There is More: Our project team will be working closely with the individual businesses on the wharf to provide an opportunity for collaboration with Ecology Action’s RightLights program to receive free energy audits. The audits report to the businesses, free of charge, ways in which they could save money on energy costs. By making small investments in certain energy efficient appliances, a business can save money on energy bills so that the retrofits essentially pay for themselves, and continue to lower the monthly energy bill. Also, RightLights provides substantial rebates on the costs of retrofits, lowering if not eliminating the out-of-pocket expense for the business. Evaluation: The project’s success will be evaluated in several ways: analyzed data on wind and solar based energy, including graphs demonstrating power output in KW as a function of wind speed in m/s, an informational website, an interpretive sign, business participation with RightLights and thus lower energy bills. Future Plans and Opportunities to Continue RESSCW’s Project: There needs to be at least one year’s worth of data to make the efforts worthwhile. Wind speed and solar irradiance are variable according to the season, so data collected in March and April are not representative of the entire year. For accurate analysis, data needs to exist throughout all seasons and conditions. This way the best combination of vertical axis wind turbines and solar panels can be determined. Soon after the completion of this project, a vertical axis wind turbine and solar panel will be installed and connected to a battery dummy load for data collection. In the future renewable energy will power the wharf maintenance vehicle, to start, and the lighting in the Wharf Headquarters Building, followed by actual businesses located on the wharf. As a condition of the permit passed by the California Coastal Commission, a long-term bird strike study on the vertical axis wind turbine is required because there has never been this type of wind turbine installed on the coast before so there is no data regarding the wind turbine’s effect on the wildlife, specifically birds. To get involved in this project and take it to the next level, contact IDEASS instructors James Barsimantov, jbarsima@ucsc.edu, and/or Tamara Ball, tballgoes@gmail.com