Many people with electric vehicles drive them to work during the day and then charge them overnight after returning home. But a simple reversal of that schedule could make it cheaper and easier to charge your electric car.
That was the conclusion reached by a team of UC Merced researchers, who recently published a paper in the Electricity Journal on "Aligning Electric Vehicle Charging with the Sun: An Opportunity for Daytime Charging?"
The first solar-over-canal project in California, which started with research at UC Merced, has begun producing electricity. Plans are now in the works to expand the technology to other areas.
A groundbreaking initiative led by faculty from seven top research universities aims to accelerate the deployment of solar arrays over California's extensive canal network.
UC Merced's electrical engineering major only started a year ago. But it's already made some significant accomplishments and attracted researchers digging into exciting projects.
A multimillion-dollar grant from the National Institutes of Health will fund research at UC Merced that could help cancer patients and others live longer, healthier lives.
The $3.5 million, five-year grant will fund bioengineering Professor Joel Spencer's lab, which is investigating the thymus, a key organ in the human immune system.
UC Merced researchers are taking part in a comprehensive, multi-agency effort aimed at efficiently measuring and mitigating methane emissions.
IBM and Los Alamos National Laboratory are leading the effort, which earned a $20 million award from the U.S. Department of Energy in December.
Measurements and data collected from space can be used to better understand life on Earth.
Helping diplomats navigate new cultures, removing mircroplastics from stormwater and automating raisin processing: These are some of the projects awarded winning scores at UC Merced's fall Innovate to Grow event.
Innovate to Grow, or I2G as it's known on campus, is a twice-a-year showcase for UC Merced engineering and computer science students to demonstrate projects they have been developing.
Teams of students work to address challenges presented to them by clients, then present their results to judges who are experts from around California.
As water becomes an ever more precious and unpredictable resource, particularly in the Central Valley, finding ways to precisely irrigate crops is a valuable tool in the fight against climate change.
Climate shifts have triggered more frequent and more severe droughts that have reduced the amount of water available for farming in key agricultural regions. Current methods to check the water needs of crops are costly and inefficient, making it difficult to use precision irrigation techniques that can save water while maintaining or improving crop yield.
It took Lilly Uvalle a few tries to complete her education at UC Merced.
Uvalle started her collegiate career in the fall of 2010 after graduating from Buhach Colony High School in Atwater.
"I did two years, my freshman and sophomore years," she said. "Then I withdrew. I tried coming back once in 2013 and withdrew again. Then I tried coming back in 2017."
Family obligations, mental health concerns and feeling overwhelmed by what it would take to get back to school got in the way. Then, in 2022, something changed.
Innovate to Grow, or I2G as it’s known on campus, is a twice-a-year showcase for UC Merced engineering and computer science students demonstrating projects they have been developing.
Students compete on teams that are judged by experts from around California. People can see the fall showcase Dec. 19, when teams display the results of their work.
These capstone projects are the culmination of students’ undergraduate careers, but the impacts are far more than academic: Teams work together to tackle real-world problems brought to them by clients.
