January 16, 2025

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.”