Colorado School of Mines doctoral candidate receives Energy Department fellowship

Sam Kerber will try to enhance the energy systems to suit specific geographic regions across the United States.
Sam Kerber will try to enhance the energy systems to suit specific geographic regions across the United States. | File photo

Sam Kerber, an incoming Ph.D. student at the Colorado School of Mines' Nuclear Science and Engineering Program, has been awarded fellowship by the Nuclear University Program of the U.S. Department of Energy worth $155,000.

Kerber will use the fellowship money to investigate storing and combining energy from various sources in more effective ways. To achieve this, he will use computational approaches to evaluate hybrid energy system performance, which includes generated power from nuclear reactors, photovoltaics and wind turbines.

Kerber will try to enhance the energy systems to suit specific geographic regions across the United States. Once this is accomplished, Kerber will then focus on determining the cost of electricity for the joint systems as a function of location before examining their carbon intensity.

By combining energy from multiple sources, Kerber hopes to reduce carbon emissions. According to Kerber, finding a place to store the energy will be the toughest thing about his research. With all the excess energy from that which is generated, figuring out where and how to store it so it can be used later will be the focus, all while using cost-effective and existing technology.