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Student Spotlight: Carla Peterman
Student Spotlight Directory
ERG PhD candidate, Carla Peterman at the CPUC.
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"Thinking Outside the Module: Innovations in Climate Change Policy and PV Technology"
Carla Peterman’s primary research interests are renewable energy technology innovation and climate change mitigation policy. Her dissertation research focuses on non-solar panel price drivers for residential solar power systems. These Balance-of-System components and costs such as inverters, other hardware, installation labor, permitting and documentation, contribute to over half of the final solar PV system price faced by customers. These costs are key and under-researched areas that state and local renewable energy policies can influence. Carla is exploring the extent to which factors such as solar installer quality, solar installer market characteristics, product standardization, regulatory complexity, and financial incentives affect PV system prices. Drawing upon the fields of Innovation Theory, Energy Markets, and Distributed Generation Technology and Policy, Carla aims to better identify the complex value chain for solar PV and expand upon the existing conceptualization of the innovation process.
As a Rhodes Scholar, Carla developed an interest in renewable energy and policy mechanisms to mitigate climate change while pursing a Msc. in Environmental Change and Management and a Masters’ of Business Administration at Oxford University. She expanded her business skills and knowledge of the electricity sector by working as an investment banker for the Power group at Lehman Brothers and as a business analyst for Isles, a community development non-profit. Carla has a long-standing interest in environmental and environmental justice issues beginning during her undergraduate education at Howard University where she studied history and environmental studies and founded the Howard University Environmental Society. She continues to outreach and work on specific environmental issues and projects related to people of color.
Carla with Solmetric SunEye, a tool for measuring site-specific solar access and shading.
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Carla values ERG and UC-Berkeley for their first-class expertise in a range of fields, supportive and incredibly bright classmates, and numerous opportunities for applied work. As an ERG doctoral student, Carla has co-authored reports for the government, assisted with writing testimony for the U.S. Congress House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, interned at the California Public Utilities Commission, and co-authored a paper on California climate change policy for the University of California Energy Institute CESM working paper series. Carla is thankful for the mentorship from a host of faculty including her qualifying exam committee: Alex Farrell, Dan Kammen, Margaret Taylor, and Catherine Wolfram; Severin Borenstein and James Bushnell of the Haas School of Business and the UC Energy Institute; and Ryan Wiser of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Ms. Peterman has benefited from a number of funding and work opportunities available through the University of California Berkeley. She is the recipient of a Chancellor’s Fellowship, and receives support through her positions as a research assistant at the University of California Energy Institute and with the Electricity Markets and Policy Group at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
4/08
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