Summary: Dr. Jeffrey Brownson of the Pennsylvania State University<br> My guest this week is Dr. Jeffrey Brownson from the Pennsylvania State University. His focus is solar energy research and education. I spoke to him at the American Solar Energy Society conference, which was hosted by Penn State. Dr. Brownson is also on the board of the society, where he represents the interests of students and faculty. He also directed Penn State’s 2009 Solar Decathlon project. If you’ve never heard of the solar decathlon I think you will be amazed at what goes into it.<br> JB: My name is Jeffrey Brownson. I am associate professor of energy and mineral engineering at Penn State University. I work primarily on solar energy research and education. I am also the faculty lead for the solar option in the online master of professional studies program for renewable energy and sustainability systems.<br> DB: That’s a lot. Quite a few hats there. Is your background in electrical engineering or?<br> JB: I’m actually a scientist by training. I am both a materials scientist and a field systems scientist. I have experience in geosciences, environmental chemistry, materials science and I have grown into the solar field over the last two decades essentially to become a solar researcher in materials and systems. That was actually kind of enacted by the solar decathlon of 2009, where I became the faculty director as I arrived at Penn State and became really caught up in solar as a whole systems approach.<br> DB: That’s a really exciting project. Can you tell us a little bit about how the decathlon works?<br> JB: The solar decathlon is targeted at students, faculty and peer partners through institutions and companies, gathering together and forming an enterprise to design, build and operate a small but completely solar powered home. And that home is then demonstrated and is part of a competition of ten different evaluations over the period of a week. In our time it was in Washington D.C. on the national mall and has since become a project in China and Europe and now will be rolling out in California.<br> DB: So they hold it every year?<br> JB: It happens every two years, which is actually advantageous because it’s a huge enterprise so even in two years you’re cutting it really tight. But what it does is it builds human capacity in understanding solar power, in understanding energy efficient building design and really in enabling a younger generation of emerging professionals to come forward and become leaders for the next generation of renewable energy, sustainability and energy efficient buildings.<br> DB: So there are so many different technologies that go into a house like that. I can’t imagine all of the systems you have to put together.<br> JB: Right and I think that was an exciting part of the solar decathlon. It really transforms what students and faculty might have originally thought of as a project into a whole collection of projects and really what I like to think of as an entire enterprise, so you’re bringing together people from many different disciplines. You have to make sure that you have architecture faculty and students as well as engineering faculty and students, communications people, we had people who were in industrial engineering just helping us to understand how our teams coordinated together so we got the highest efficiency for project development out of the event. And those were just naturally occurring features of this. And I think it really came about because we knew we were in a competition, we knew we were trying to succeed but we also didn’t know what we were doing. So, we kind of put anything together all at once and hoped for the best and that leaves a lot of room for creativity and new innovation.<br> DB: Well I didn’t realize that that competition moved every two years.<br> JB: It’s now moving. There was a period where it was on the national mall for at least four or five competitions and then it started go...
