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Title: Diffusion of Innovations: Interplay of Social, Economic, Technological, and Policy Drivers in the Solar Industry. Summary of UT Austin Student Capstone Research Projects

Abstract

The University of Texas at Austin’s Policy Research Project (PRP), a nine-month (two semesters) capstone, is a keystone of the core curriculum at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. In PRPs, small groups of students, under the mentorship of a faculty director, take on real-world problems that require special knowledge and skill sets. PRPs expose students to challenges in formulating and executing research, and in communicating academic research and related complex data to broader stakeholder communities and decision makers. The PRP structure is an innovative and effective approach for integrating research within the teaching and training of graduate students who are preparing themselves to address important real-world problems at the intersection of society, economics, technology, and policy. The project summaries below describe seven papers developed during September 2017 – May 2018 as part of a PRP on “Diffusion of Innovations: Interplay of Social, Economic, Technological, and Policy Drivers in the Solar Industry.” Twenty graduate students, drawn from the LBJ School’s Masters in Public Affairs and Masters in Global Policy Studies programs and the Jackson School Geoscience’s Energy and Earth Resources program, participated in this PRP. Dr. Varun Rai, Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Research at the LBJ School, directedmore » the PRP, with support from his research team including: Dr. Ariane Beck, Dr. Ashok Sekar, D. Cale Reeves, and Erik Funkhouser. Clients for the project included the U.S. Department of Energy (Casey Canfield), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Ben Hoen, Galen Barbose Joachim Seel, Naïm Darghouth, Ryan Wiser), and National Renewable Energy Laboratory (Benjamin Sigrin, Eric O’Shaughnessy). The seven projects separately addressed one of the following topics: (1) low- and middle-income PV adoption, (2) modeling economic and information intervention design, (3) evaluation of DOE’s Solar in Your Community Challenge, (4) property value impacts near large-scale solar facilities, (5) solar market maturity and evolution of business models, (6) social media data for predicting PV adoption, and (7) individual-level variation in adoption of innovations. Many of the papers relied on data collected and curated by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, including data embedded within the annual Tracking the Sun and Utility-Scale Solar reports. Each of the seven teams in the PRP prepared a research paper. The PRP culminated with a full-day conference at UT Austin in May 2018 to present findings from the seven projects in this PRP to a broad audience of about 75 experts from academia, national labs, industry, and government from across the country.« less

Authors:
 [1];  [1];  [1];  [1];  [1];  [2];  [2];  [2];  [2];  [2];  [3];  [3];  [4]
  1. Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
  2. Univ. of Texas, Austin, TX (United States)
  3. National Renewable Energy Lab. (NREL), Golden, CO (United States)
  4. Missouri Univ. of Science and Technology, Rolla, MO (United States)
Publication Date:
Research Org.:
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. (LBNL), Berkeley, CA (United States)
Sponsoring Org.:
USDOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), Renewable Power Office. Solar Energy Technologies Office
OSTI Identifier:
1477405
DOE Contract Number:  
AC02-05CH11231
Resource Type:
Technical Report
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Subject:
29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY; 14 SOLAR ENERGY

Citation Formats

Wiser, Ryan H., Darghouth, Naim R., Hoen, Ben, Barbose, Galen L., Seel, Joachim, Rai, Varun, Beck, Ariane, Sekar, Ashok, Reeves, D. Cale, Funkhouser, Erik, O'Shaughnessy, Erin, Sigrin, Benjamin, and Canfield, Casey. Diffusion of Innovations: Interplay of Social, Economic, Technological, and Policy Drivers in the Solar Industry. Summary of UT Austin Student Capstone Research Projects. United States: N. p., 2018. Web. doi:10.2172/1477405.
Wiser, Ryan H., Darghouth, Naim R., Hoen, Ben, Barbose, Galen L., Seel, Joachim, Rai, Varun, Beck, Ariane, Sekar, Ashok, Reeves, D. Cale, Funkhouser, Erik, O'Shaughnessy, Erin, Sigrin, Benjamin, & Canfield, Casey. Diffusion of Innovations: Interplay of Social, Economic, Technological, and Policy Drivers in the Solar Industry. Summary of UT Austin Student Capstone Research Projects. United States. https://doi.org/10.2172/1477405
Wiser, Ryan H., Darghouth, Naim R., Hoen, Ben, Barbose, Galen L., Seel, Joachim, Rai, Varun, Beck, Ariane, Sekar, Ashok, Reeves, D. Cale, Funkhouser, Erik, O'Shaughnessy, Erin, Sigrin, Benjamin, and Canfield, Casey. 2018. "Diffusion of Innovations: Interplay of Social, Economic, Technological, and Policy Drivers in the Solar Industry. Summary of UT Austin Student Capstone Research Projects". United States. https://doi.org/10.2172/1477405. https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1477405.
@article{osti_1477405,
title = {Diffusion of Innovations: Interplay of Social, Economic, Technological, and Policy Drivers in the Solar Industry. Summary of UT Austin Student Capstone Research Projects},
author = {Wiser, Ryan H. and Darghouth, Naim R. and Hoen, Ben and Barbose, Galen L. and Seel, Joachim and Rai, Varun and Beck, Ariane and Sekar, Ashok and Reeves, D. Cale and Funkhouser, Erik and O'Shaughnessy, Erin and Sigrin, Benjamin and Canfield, Casey},
abstractNote = {The University of Texas at Austin’s Policy Research Project (PRP), a nine-month (two semesters) capstone, is a keystone of the core curriculum at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. In PRPs, small groups of students, under the mentorship of a faculty director, take on real-world problems that require special knowledge and skill sets. PRPs expose students to challenges in formulating and executing research, and in communicating academic research and related complex data to broader stakeholder communities and decision makers. The PRP structure is an innovative and effective approach for integrating research within the teaching and training of graduate students who are preparing themselves to address important real-world problems at the intersection of society, economics, technology, and policy. The project summaries below describe seven papers developed during September 2017 – May 2018 as part of a PRP on “Diffusion of Innovations: Interplay of Social, Economic, Technological, and Policy Drivers in the Solar Industry.” Twenty graduate students, drawn from the LBJ School’s Masters in Public Affairs and Masters in Global Policy Studies programs and the Jackson School Geoscience’s Energy and Earth Resources program, participated in this PRP. Dr. Varun Rai, Associate Professor and Associate Dean for Research at the LBJ School, directed the PRP, with support from his research team including: Dr. Ariane Beck, Dr. Ashok Sekar, D. Cale Reeves, and Erik Funkhouser. Clients for the project included the U.S. Department of Energy (Casey Canfield), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Ben Hoen, Galen Barbose Joachim Seel, Naïm Darghouth, Ryan Wiser), and National Renewable Energy Laboratory (Benjamin Sigrin, Eric O’Shaughnessy). The seven projects separately addressed one of the following topics: (1) low- and middle-income PV adoption, (2) modeling economic and information intervention design, (3) evaluation of DOE’s Solar in Your Community Challenge, (4) property value impacts near large-scale solar facilities, (5) solar market maturity and evolution of business models, (6) social media data for predicting PV adoption, and (7) individual-level variation in adoption of innovations. Many of the papers relied on data collected and curated by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, including data embedded within the annual Tracking the Sun and Utility-Scale Solar reports. Each of the seven teams in the PRP prepared a research paper. The PRP culminated with a full-day conference at UT Austin in May 2018 to present findings from the seven projects in this PRP to a broad audience of about 75 experts from academia, national labs, industry, and government from across the country.},
doi = {10.2172/1477405},
url = {https://www.osti.gov/biblio/1477405}, journal = {},
number = ,
volume = ,
place = {United States},
year = {Tue Oct 09 00:00:00 EDT 2018},
month = {Tue Oct 09 00:00:00 EDT 2018}
}