Georgia
Georgia Southern senior wins research poster award, heading to Denmark for solar panel study | Newsroom
When the power goes out during a storm, there’s a team with a Georgia Southern University student at the Georgia Transmission Corporation (GTC) responsible for looking into what happened. Elizabeth Sills, a computer and electrical engineering senior from Savannah works in the system reliability department for the GTC.engin
“If there’s an outage and they don’t know what caused it, I’ll run a lightning study to see if there’s lightning in the area,” said Sills. “Then, for example, I’ll send out an email saying it was a negative five kilovolt bolt. That way when the field guys go out, they know what to expect.”
Sills hasn’t just been working on the reliability of current power grids, but is also working to bolster the reliability of future power sources. During the previous semester, she had been intrigued by the possibility of contributing to solar energy advancements. As part of an electric engineering course, she tested the strength and longevity of solar panels in various climates and other elements.
Sills noted climate conditions can also impact how much technology can be added onto a solar panel to increase efficiencies or margins of error.
“There are different types of solar panels,” she said. “Some of them can rotate. So if the sun’s coming up, the panel will face the sun and then it will rotate with it. Some can also swivel, and there are some that can bend 90 degrees. If you get the whole range of motion, it’s more likely that more parts will fail.”
Her findings revealed that panels kept in temperatures between 30°F and 86°F significantly extended the lifespan of the solar panels. This information is critical for the expansion of their use across the globe.
Her work has even garnered international attention.
Sills was invited to be part of a small research team going to Denmark over the next summer to continue her research into solar panels and their utilization. Her research team is made up of five other students from across the U.S. and is supported through funding from the National Science Foundation.
“Most of the research in this area is now over in Europe,” she said. “They have different transformer models and a whole different grid over there. We want to see if we can bring it to America and still be able to use the same functions.”
This isn’t her first accolade in this field of study.
More recently, Sills brought a statewide award back to Eagle Nation. Last fall, she participated in the Georgia Undergraduate Research Conference, hosted by Oxford College of Emory University. Out of 80 competitors from across Georgia, her research on power converters in solar panels won the “Outstanding Poster” award. Sills’ award-winning research revealed new possibilities that can assist with the reliability of power electronic converters, ensuring solar panels function efficiently under temperature and stress.
“I was excited,” Sills said. “It was my first ever competition for research posters or anything of that nature so I didn’t know what to expect. It was very surprising.”
Subscribe to the Clarion Ledger
If you are not a subscriber, consider subscribing now. You will also get access to the Clarion Ledger’s E-Edition, the electronic replica of the print publication along with print archives. The E-edition is also available on our app.
USA Today Network
Kirk Fordice-like Rick Jackson is sounding a whole lot like Daniel Kirkwood Fordice as he tries to be elected Georgia’s next governor.
Fordice came out of nowhere — actually, Vicksburg is somewhere but you know what I mean — in 1991 to become a two-term Mississippi governor.
He had money but nothing like Jackson, a billionaire businessman who’s also trying to emerge from nowhere politically to win Georgia’s top office.
“The establishment hated Trump, because they couldn’t control him. They are going to hate me,” Jackson says in an ad for Georgia’s Republican Primary on May 19, sounding like one of my favorite Mississippi governors — Fordice, because of his unpredictable personality (he could vilify or charm you, all in one sentence), not his politics. He died in 2004 of cancer.
I stood by a cafe entrance one morning, waiting to cover a Fordice speech. When he appeared, I stuck out my hand to shake his. “I’m not shaking your damn hand. You’re part of the problem down there (referring to the newspaper),” he told me, smiling and moving on.
Jackson rose to become one of economic giant-Georgia’s wealthiest people. He came from Atlanta’s rough midtown area, ending up in the foster care system. He left college due to poor financial circumstances.
The 71-year-old Jackson wormed his way into the dynamic city’s business scene in the late 1970s, mostly of the healthcare variety with mixed success before starting a workforce staffing and services company and later an antibiotics manufacturing plant. He turned those businesses into billion-dollar enterprises.
“It’s God’s money,” he said in rural Blakely, and he’s been charitable with it.
Jackson doesn’t try to hide his vast wealth. His family lives in a 48,000-square-foot mansion at Cumming, a place of nearly 100,000 people near Atlanta in Forsyth County, which once promoted its almost all-white population as a virtue.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Bill Torpy recently wrote that Jackson will spend a ton of his own money in seeking another mansion, the one occupied by Georgia’s governor. Torpy noted that present Lt. Gov. Burt Jones was once heavily favored to win the primary race, but he’s fallen behind Jackson’s bold money bid.
“The one-time front-runner in the Republican primary (Jones) has been relegated to No. 2, the result of a $100 million Mack truck running him over.
Rick Jackson, a billionaire healthcare tycoon, a man with a sly smile and reptilian gaze, is the guy driving that truck,” Torpy wrote.
The GOP field includes Secretary of State Brad Raffensberger, who spurned Trump’s demand to find 11,780 votes that would’ve allowed him to win Georgia in 2020.
Fordice was effective with some bombastic rhetoric during his run for governor, but I don’t remember it reaching the histrionic level employed by Jackson. In a major ad blitz, often referencing (Georgia college student) Laken Riley’s murderer, Jackson promises that unauthorized immigrants committing violent crimes will be “deported or departed … any questions?”
In another ad, Jackson growled, “Like President Trump, I don’t owe anybody anything, and like you, I’m sick of career politicians.”
Fordice spent only $1 million to get himself elected Mississippi’s governor. He somewhat sneaked up on the establishment, riding no escalator to the first floor of his Vicksburg concrete river mats-contracting office to declare his intentions. Who could ever forget his announcement seeking the governorship that ran on page 5 of the Clarion Ledger?
Recent polling ahead of Georgia’s May primaries for governor shows the eventual Republican nominee faces a strong Democrat in the November general election, most likely former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. That’ll require another whole pot of money.
— Mac Gordon, a native of McComb, is a retired Mississippi newspaperman. He can be reached at macmarygordon@gmail.com.
Gulfstream recently announced a $5 million investment in Georgia education, welcoming students and leaders to its Savannah headquarters.
-
Business2 minutes agoF.D.A. Commissioner Marty Makary Resigns After Weeks of Pressure
-
Science8 minutes agoA Taxidermist Gives Dead Animals a New Life
-
Health14 minutes ago‘Trimester Zero’: What to Expect When You’re Expecting to Expect
-
Culture26 minutes agoRevolution is the Theme at the Firsts London Book Fair
-
Lifestyle32 minutes agoLeigh Magar, High-End Milliner Turned Indigo Artist, Dies at 57
-
Education38 minutes agoLuna Lab Is Building a Future for Female Composers
-
Technology44 minutes agoSam Altman says Elon Musk’s mind games were damaging OpenAI
-
World50 minutes agoMacron takes the stage uninvited at Africa summit to scold crowd for ‘total lack of respect’