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Generating Hope: Solving power disparity in rural communities
Arun Kumar Narasimhan wants to help meet the demand for electricity in rural areas of developing countries. About 1.3 billion people around the world are without electricity, he noted, and 90 percent of that number are from India and sub-Saharan African countries. His rural hometown in southern India had frequent power outages, and he put solar panels on his family’s rooftop to power the home. But not everyone in his town could afford this, he said, and he wanted to help find a way toward grid independence in rural areas.
“I want to work on addressing societal problems like rural electrification and reducing our carbon footprint through sustainable practices,” he said.
Arun, 30, moved to the United States in 2013 to further his studies. He has a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from SSN College of Engineering and a master’s degree in energy and environmental engineering from VIT University.
He is working with thermodynamic cycles and small-scale power generation, and is receiving his doctoral degree at USF in chemical engineering.
At CERC, he has been designing scroll expanders that convert solar heat to power and mapping their performance for small-scale power generation (less than 50 kilowatts), which is more suitable for localized electricity in rural areas that have higher solar resource availability due to their latitude.
Scroll expanders are more suited and efficient for small-scale power generation than other types of expanders and turbines. Certain working fluids allow compact design of scroll expanders, thereby reducing the leakage and improving the overall performance, he said.
Arun is searching for jobs in corporate research and academia, particularly in the areas of small-scale power generation and building energy modeling and efficiency. His most memorable experience at USF was “fascinating lectures that taught me how to teach” and “reducing the carbon footprint of the campus through sustainable projects” such as installing LEDs at BSF, streetlights in parking lots, and a 400-kW solar PV power plant at the Marshall Center, he said.
At USF he learned how to address and solve a research problem, to communicate and present ideas clearly, as well as improve his research writing techniques. He is motivated by “solving research problems and challenging work.’’