Posts tagged sum
Boulder’s energy future is brighter
Nov 6th
Municipalization ballot measure 2E passing by significant margin, 310 failing
City outlines implications for possible creation of electric utility
City outlines implications for possible creation of electric utility
While some votes remain to be counted tonight, ballot measure 2E appears headed for a significant victory with a competing ballot measure 310 poised for defeat.
The approval of measure 2E, pending final results, will give the city flexibility in moving forward with the initial 2011 voter-approved path toward exploring the creation of a local electric utility while also recognizing concerns about unforeseen costs and customer representation. Specifically, measure 2E puts a limit on the amount the city can pay to acquire the system and clarifies some out-of-city service issues. The ballot measure includes the following:
- Setting a limit of $214 million for acquisition of Xcel’s assets and stranded costs, if stranded costs are paid in one lump sum.
- Allowing out-of-city customers, if any are included, to serve on the advisory board of a potential local electric utility.
- Facilitating utility choice on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis to potential out-of-city customers.
- Requiring rates of out-of-city customers to be the same as those in the same class of in-city customers.
- Limiting brokerage fees associated with acquiring debt to industry standards.
These requirements are in addition to criteria passed by voters as part of the Charter in 2011. These are:
- Rates must be equal or less than those offered by Xcel Energy at the time of acquisition.
- The utility must have sufficient revenue to cover operating costs and debt, plus carry a reserve of 25 percent of the debt amount, referred to as “Debt Service Coverage Ratio.”
- Reliability must remain comparable to that being offered by Xcel Energy.
- There must be a plan to increase renewable energy in the supply.
- There must be a plan to decrease greenhouse gas emissions that result from a fossil-fuel based electricity supply.
The original 2011 voter-approved Charter language on municipalization can be found at –http://www.colocode.com/boulder2/charter_articleXIII.htm. The provisions in 2E will be added to the existing Charter requirements.
“We are pleased with the results of today’s election concerning the municipalization ballot items,” said Heather Bailey, executive director of energy strategy and electric utility development. “The additional requirements set by 2E will address concerns about the unknown amounts of acquisition and stranded costs associated with forming a local utility and help define the path the community would like us to take towards creating the electric utility of the future right here in Boulder.”
The next steps in the municipalization exploration study will focus on the negotiation and acquisition process associated with obtaining the infrastructure the city would need to operate a safe and reliable local electric utility.
All information related to Boulder’s Energy Future and the municipalization study is available atwww.BoulderEnergyFuture.com.
–CITY–
CU president Bruce Benson cracks back at news media over salary debacle
Mar 11th
Perception and reality
Public universities such as ours are subject to public scrutiny. Even though the state of Colorado provides less than 6 percent of our budget, we have an obligation to be open and accountable to our students, alumni and citizens. The close examination that comes along with that obligation is fair.
CU President Bruce Benson
Public universities such as ours are subject to public scrutiny. Even though the state of Colorado provides less than 6 percent of our budget, we have an obligation to be open and accountable to our students, alumni and citizens. The close examination that comes along with that obligation is fair.
The university has had its share of scrutiny from Colorado media recently. In the past month, stories and editorials have covered everything from salaries to proposed tuition increases. Suffice it to say that most have been negative. Many CU alumni and friends have shared with me that they feel the coverage paints an unfair picture of our university. I agree in some cases but not all. Regardless, I want to take this opportunity to address some common perceptions (and misperceptions) in recent reports about CU and provide context that may not always make headlines or sound bites.
Perception: CU makes important decisions about tuition and salaries out of the public eye.
Reality: The Board of Regents every year sets tuition and compensation pools in public meetings that occur over many months. For instance, the regents began discussing compensation for fiscal year 2011-12 in February 2011, furthered the conversation in early April and established a 3 percent merit salary pool at their public meeting in late April, at the same time they approved tuition rates. The media was at the meeting and reported the story. The merit pool was contingent upon campuses meeting established budget targets, which they did in October.
For fiscal year 2012-13 tuition setting, the discussion began at the board retreat last July (with media present), continued with two meetings in September, another in November and a budget retreat in January. All are public meetings. We will have another one on Wednesday.
Perception: Tuition and fees at CU are too high.
Reality: We know the pressures facing students and families in a down economy. But a CU education is a considerable value. Tuition on all our campuses is at or below peer averages. Many similar universities charge thousands more than we do, even though their state support is also thousands more per student. Colorado ranks 48th nationally in state funding per resident student. And the quality of a CU education is a great investment, perhaps the best a person will make. It leads to more income, greater opportunities, increased civic and community engagement and better health.
Perception: Middle-income families are being priced out of an education at CU.
Reality: We have made considerable investments in financial aid, increasing our pool of internally generated aid (apart from state and federal financial aid) from $38 million in 2002 to $120 million today. Student debt and default rates at CU ($23,125 and 3.4 percent) are below the national average ($25,250 and 8.8 percent). We believe a factor in the low default rate is that our students are getting jobs after graduation.
Perception: CU is an inefficient bureaucracy.
Reality: We have made operating efficiently one of our guiding principles. CU’s administrative overhead is 44 percent below our national peer average. We have streamlined bureaucracy, made strategic cuts and instituted better business practices. We have cut millions in the past four years but are always looking for more efficiencies. The result of all this can be seen in our outcomes. CU produces the most degrees for one of the lowest costs in the nation.
Perception: Salaries at CU are out of control, as evidenced by raises for “top administrators.”
Reality: We are in a market economy and are a people-intensive enterprise. Some three quarters of our expenditures are for people. Delivering a quality education at CU means investing in people. Additionally, our business has increased substantially during the recession, with an 11.5 percent increase in enrollment the past decade and record enrollment on our campuses. Degrees awarded over the same period increased 34 percent.
Top administrative raises accounted for a small percentage of the total salary pool. The vast majority went to faculty, who are critical to the quality of a CU education. More than 85 percent of those who received merit raises received less than $4,000.
Perception: Our faculty members are underworked and overpaid.
Reality: While some believe faculty only teach a couple of courses, the reality is our world-class faculty teach many courses, advise and mentor students, conduct scholarly activity, generate research funding, and are active in community and university service. They have stepped up during difficult times. For example, at CU-Boulder, some 400 faculty members taught more than the standard course load. CU has a great faculty whose prime imperative is to deliver a quality education. And they deliver.
CU is a complex place with many moving parts. We understand that standing on the outside looking in at just one of those parts may not show the whole picture of who we are. But the sum of those parts is a university that operates openly and efficiently, delivers to our students a world-class education and advances the economy, health and culture of Colorado and beyond.
For feedback, contact officeofthepresident@cu.edu
Sincerely,
Bruce Benson
President
Bruce Benson
President
UNEXPECTED ADHESION PROPERTIES OF GRAPHENE MAY LEAD TO NEW NANOTECHNOLOGY DEVICES
Aug 23rd
Graphene, considered the most exciting new material under study in the world of nanotechnology, just got even more interesting, according to a new study by a group of researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder.
The new findings — that graphene has surprisingly powerful adhesion qualities — are expected to help guide the development of graphene manufacturing and of graphene-based mechanical devices such as resonators and gas separation membranes, according to the CU-Boulder team. The experimentsshowed that the extreme flexibility of graphene allows it to conform to the topography of even the smoothest substrates.
Graphene consists of a single layer of carbon atoms chemically bonded in a hexagonal chicken wire lattice. Its unique atomic structure could some day replace silicon as the basis of electronic devices and integrated circuits because of its remarkable electrical, mechanical and thermal properties, said Assistant Professor Scott Bunch of the CU-Boulder mechanical engineering department and lead study author.
A paper on the subject was published online in the Aug. 14 issue of Nature Nanotechnology. Co-authors on the study included CU-Boulder graduate students Steven Koenig and NarasimhaBoddeti and Professor Martin Dunn of the mechanical engineering department.
“The real excitement for me is the possibility of creating new applications that exploit the remarkable flexibility and adhesive characteristics of graphene and devising unique experiments that can teach us more about the nanoscale properties of this amazing material,” Bunch said.
Not only does graphene have the highest electrical and thermal conductivity among all materials known, but this “wonder material” has been shown to be the thinnest, stiffest and strongest material in the world, as well as being impermeable to all standard gases. It’s newly discovered adhesion properties can now be added to the list of the material’s seemingly contradictory qualities, said Bunch.
The CU-Boulder team measured the adhesion energy of graphene sheets, ranging from one to five atomic layers, with a glass substrate, using a pressurized “blister test” to quantify the adhesion between graphene and glass plates.
Adhesion energy describes how “sticky” two things are when placed together. Scotch tape is one example of a material with high adhesion; the gecko lizard, which seemingly defies gravity by scaling up vertical walls using adhesion between its feet and the wall, is another. Adhesion also canplay a detrimental role, as in suspended micromechanical structures where adhesion can cause device failure or prolong the development of a technology, said Bunch.
The CU research, the first direct experimental measurements of the adhesion of graphene nanostructures, showed that so-called “van der Waals forces” — the sum of the attractive or repulsive forces between molecules — clamp the graphene samples to the substrates and also hold together the individual graphene sheets in multilayer samples.
The researchers found the adhesion energies between graphene and the glass substrate were several orders of magnitude larger than adhesion energies in typical micromechanical structures, an interaction they described as more liquid-like than solid-like, said Bunch.
The CU-Boulder study was funded primarily by the National Science Foundation and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
The importance of graphene in the scientific world was illustrated by the 2010 Nobel Prize in physics that honored two scientists at Manchester University in England, Andre K. Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, for producing, isolating, identifying and characterizing graphene.
There is interest in exploiting graphene’s incredible mechanical properties to create ultrathin membranes for energy-efficient separations such as those needed for natural gas processing or water purification, while graphene’s superior electrical properties promise to revolutionize the microelectronics industry, said Bunch.
In all of these applications, including any large-scale graphene manufacturing, the interaction that graphene has with a surface is of critical importance and a scientific understanding will help push the technology forward, he said.
