Decision Support Tool Developed by BAE Graduate Student for Solar Energy on Dairy Farms
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EmailBAE Graduate Student Helen Miller combines her two passions of engineering and people to develop a decision making tool for farmers. This tool will help farmers determine if converting to soler energy is a sustainable choice for them.
Helen Miller always knew she wanted her work to combine her two passions, engineering, and people. Through her education, she was driven to understand how machines work as well as the people who use them. In 2020, she graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering, with an additional major in Psychology and a minor in Agribusiness management. During her senior year, she didn't feel ready to go into the industry, and there was more for her to learn in school.
During her undergraduate degree, she joined the College of Engineering's chapter of Engineers without Borders, whose goal is to create a more stable and prosperous world by addressing people's basic human needs by providing necessities such as clean water, power, sanitation, and education.
I joined Engineers Without Borders to translate the theory of engineering into a practice that served communities in need. Miller said.
During an Engineers Without Borders meeting, Dr. Ajit Srivastava spoke as a guest about his work mechanizing agriculture in Africa. This talk inspired Miller to reach out to Dr. Srivastava and inquire about what graduate work looks like in Biosystems Engineering. During their meeting, Dr. Srivastava spoke passionately about the field of BAE and the scope of its work. His meaningful descriptions like, the nature of BAE is humanitarian engineering are what helped convince Miller to pursue a master's degree in BAE.
Since that meeting and starting her master's, Miller has been focusing her thesis on creating a decision-support tool for dairy farmers to determine if they can switch to solar power for their energy needs. Miller has been participating in courses in web design and coding to build the online platform to house the decision-making tool.
Prior to developing the web platform, Miller completed a survey of dairy farmers in Michigan, in collaboration with MMPA. The survey found that most farmers were very interested in learning about solar energy, which is promising for Miller's project. The biggest hurdle? Cost. Miller hopes that her project will ease farmers' minds about the expense of installing solar technology. With the use of the decision support tool, farmers will know if the solar investment will save them money in the long run.
Miller is also using data provided by Aluel Go, an outreach specialist in BAE, for the modeling aspect of her project. A regression analysis was performed to get baseline data to begin the online platform for the decision-making tool.
Miller took her findings to the Sustainable Energy for a Sustainable Future conference, hosted by the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE). According to the conference website, the purpose of the conference is to enable interdisciplinary dialogue among multinational scientists, engineers, business owners, and government agents about new renewable energy generation technologies. Miller presented her project and preliminary findings during a technical session at the conference.
"I hope my work reduces the financial concerns of dairy farmers, while also easing their transition into a sustainable future through solar technology." Miller said.
