In summer 2023, the Oslo-based researchers from Work Package 5 - Environmental Sustainability hosted motivated student interns who wanted to learn more about research. Three research internships related to renewable energy allowed Simone Milani, Zhihao Liu, and Johan Fredrik Agerup to be, at least temporarily, part of the AtLAST research team.
The students worked at the Department of Technology Systems at the University of Oslo for six weeks during June/July, a period that was purposefully chosen to counteract the breakout of all staff and doctoral students during the vacation.
Simone Milani, enrolled in the Master's Degree program in Renewable Energy Systems at the University of Oslo, forecasted the electricity demand in San Pedro de Atacama, under the supervision of Isabelle Viole, a PhD candidate at ITS.
– Why did you research specifically the power demand of this place in the Atacama?
– San Pedro de Atacama is the closest municipality to the site that has been chosen for the installation of the AtLAST telescope, and it includes a population that is scattered in the desert of Atacama at more than 2,400 meters altitude. We want to lower the impact that the new AtLAST observatory will have on the environment and on the people living around it. To do so, if we can predict the energy demand that the town of San Pedro may require by the year 2030, we would be able to investigate also how the new AtLAST observatory and its renewable energy system can help in providing such energy.
– Shall this power consumed in San Pedro come from renewable energy sources?
– Yes, exactly, this is the goal. And, in order to make the most of the electricity that can be generated by solar panels, we need to shift the demands towards the sunny hours. Therefore, I am investigating methods to shift some of the forecasted power consumption to hours when solar energy is more abundant, Simone summarizes his research.
Zhihao Liu, a recent graduate from the Master’s program in Geoscience, and Johan Fredrik Agerup, a Computational Science student, worked on a project on statistical downscaling of weather data from global climate models. Their goal was to increase the resolution of the future weather data generated by global models, to achieve better estimates of the solar power generation for AtLAST. Zhihao and Johan Fredrik used reanalysis data as their reference, and dove into bias correction to result with more realistic estimates.
Through this project, the two students worked with standardized global datasets, mainly ERA5 and CMIP6, and experienced how difficult it can be to leverage data-driven methods for statistical downscaling.
– I was really glad to spend my summer with the AtLAST team, and hope that we leave a tangible mark on the projects we immersed ourselves in, Johan admits.
– It was really intriguing to enter the world of research, and especially to be in contact with an inspiring international team, Simone says.
After this opportunity, Simone, Johan, and Zhihao are determined to visit Chile once they finish their studies, and are excited to see the outcomes of the Environmental Sustainability work of the AtLAST group.
