COMMUNITY CLASSES & WORKSHOPS

SERC staff assist the ERE department in teaching laboratories and courses both in our facility and elsewhere on campus. SERC also offers a course for community members through HSU Extended Education called “Understanding Grid-Connected Solar Electric Systems- A Course for the Homeowner or Small Business Person.”

Materials from "How to Cut Energy Costs for your Business":
Electrical Energy Audit Form
How Does Your Energy Use Compare? A worksheet for calculating energy use intensity.
Simple Payback, Net Present Value, Benefit-Cost Ratio and Internal Rate of Return Calculator
Utility Rate
Appliance Use- wattage and cost or Appliance Use- wattage and cost (includes space cooling)
Energy Calculations

Materials from "Residential and Small Commercial Energy Auditing":
Below are several Excel tables and spreadsheets developed by instructor Scott Terrell in the course of his energy auditing work. He provided the comments given below on each of the files.

Appliance Use A simple, yet valuable residential tool for energy auditing and high bill investigations.
Comparison of heating technologies This is a good one for comparing the operating cost of different heating technologies. I use it to show the %savings on heating with a ground source heat pump vs. other conventional heating technologies.
Energy Calculations This is a little spreadsheet I developed from a 10 question energy calculation quiz I was given.
Appliance Use Cooling Not that you need this in Humboldt County.
Ground Source Heat Pumps Here is some "practical" data we collected in 1996-1998 on ground source heat pumps and their performance and cost to operate through a CA Energy Comm. research project in Truckee. This research was the basis to look at the house as a system which led to the next research project in 2001-02. An efficient heating system does not operate efficiently in an inefficient building.
Small business energy analysis This is typical of the style of small business energy analysis I do. I usually add columns that project the energy savings for an efficiency improvement, the cost of the measure, and the economic benefit including the return on investment.

A SERC engineer instructs Engineering 475 students on operating procedures of our fuel cell test stations.		SERC staff and Engineering 475 students pose in front of the newly installed PV system at Wolf Creek Outdoor School in Orick, CA.
During the first "Understanding Grid-Connected Solar Electric Systems" class, participants helped install the new PV system at HSU's Campus Center for Appropriate Technology (CCAT).		As part of the Engineering 475 course curriculum, students have the opportunity to assemble (above, right) and perform experiments (below) using SERC's single cell fuel cells.