At a glance
Global Renewables Infrastructure Development (GRID), an RSO, will install a small, off-grid solar microgrid testbed on the UW… Read full summary
- Funding received
- 2025-2026
- Mini
- Awarded
- $1,100
- Funding partners
-
- Services and Activities Fee (SAF)
- Website & social links
Global Renewables Infrastructure Development (GRID), an RSO, will install a small, off-grid solar microgrid testbed on the UW Power Plant roof to provide students with hands-on experience in renewable energy systems. The project combines solar hardware with a custom data platform to track and visualize system performance in real time. By creating an open-access datalogger, the project will support student learning, research, and long-term analysis of microgrid systems. Insights gained will improve future deployments and help address challenges in maintaining remote energy systems. This initiative advances sustainability education while building scalable tools that support reliable, community-centered renewable energy solutions. Funds support the materials needed to install and maintain the microgrid.
GRID will be deploying a photovoltaic testbed on the roof of the University of Washington Power Plant.
This solar project will be an off-grid, fully self-sustaining microgrid consisting of a single solar panel. The project has software and hardware components: the software consists of a virtual host interfacing with an RTU to receive and send data to a custom database/visualizer with Graphana Labs. The hardware consists of a single panel connected to an inverter and a battery, along with various sensors. The goal is to allow UW students to get hands-on experience with solar hardware and data while allowing us to remotely improve on previous and future GRID projects. Having this sort of infrastructure easily accessible at UW allows us to better understand and combat the challenges we have faced deploying remote microgrids and maintaining systems from afar. Our main deliverable is creating an open-access datalogger for tracking microgrid systems and visualizing data patterns. We hope our impact will demystify microgrids and inspire the wider UW community to co-create infrastructure with us to make these systems more deployable.
As of October 2025, we have almost all of the major hardware components necessary except the battery. Upon receiving this grant, our priority would be ordering the battery and the SIM card. While those arrive, we will assemble the rest of the physical system and begin the software infrastructure. We will use the remaining funds to buy various components listed in our budget breakdown like terminal blocks, sensors, wires, and other elements that could take data on different variables, like a pyranometer. Before full system deployment, we will complete a thorough safety and sensor check.
Once the physical setup is complete, we will build upon our relationships within the UW community to spread education about microgrids, collect data for long-term analysis, and use our findings to support other outreach projects. Compared to similar organizations that are focused on execution, we at GRID try to perfect best practices and elevate our international partner’s voices to make use of our smaller budget. This project is an investment in remote telemetry infrastructure so that future microgrid projects have a reliable method of data collection. A strong data collection process directly improves the quality of life of the rural populations because it gives context to the current strains of the system and informs future modifications.
Noah Beckford
Project lead
- npbeckford@outlook.com
- Affiliation
- Student
- Years
- 1 year(s) remaining at UW
- Affiliated groups
- GRID
Anika Paudel
Team member
- apaudel@uw.edu
- Affiliation
- Student
- Years
- 1 year(s) remaining at UW
- Affiliated groups
- GRID
Warren Midkiff
Building Manager
- wsm6@uw.edu
- Affiliation and department
- UW Power Plant
- Stakeholder approval form
Request amount and budget
Plans for financial longevity
After CSF funding ends, our project will be self-sustaining through our club’s regular fundraising. The only recurring expense is the SIM Card, which is a small monthly cost we can pay for with quarterly fundraising. For any hardware issue we will contact vendors under warranty or perform our own troubleshooting. We already have a user manual from our previous microgrid project that we will update and share accordingly. All of our code can be seen on our GitHub and we will host multiple workshops to get our members familiar with the environment and setting up our website/server. All account information will be transferred to the new exec team so they can have access to all our documentation.
- Oct. 2024 to Oct. 2025 -- project scoping and planning
- Finish hardware installment plan
- Begin software plan
- Finalize funding sources
- Order and secure all parts for phase 1 of system
- Nov. to Jan. 2026 -- complete system assembly and pre-test functional and safety evaluation
- Install hardware, which includes
- Panel mount
- Electronics
- Safety check
- Have basic software infrastructure in place
- Install hardware, which includes
- Feb. 2026 to April 2026-- system deployment
- Start taking and storing data
- Continue fine-tuning the software
- Conduct in-person checks on the system every month (or when deemed necessary)
- May to Sept. 2026 -- evaluate system performance and re-evaluate project trajectory
- Start phase 2 of the project (adding additional sensors)
- Perfect system software
- Conduct outreach with other student groups
- Write article(s) on system data
- Ensure that all elements of the system are well-documented for future personnel
Plans for long-term project management
The lifecycle of our project is designed to span 20 years. To ensure continuity, our club will take full responsibility for maintaining all equipment and contacting vendors regarding warranty coverage.
We plan to leave behind comprehensive documentation such as user guides and hosting software workshops to train future leadership to manage and expand the system effectively.
We also benefit from mentorship through our partners at Kilowatts for Humanity (KwH), including professors and professionals experienced with RTU systems who provide ongoing technical and organizational guidance. This mentorship structure helps retain new leadership and prevents burnout by ensuring consistent support.
Our officer team is organized for flexibility and collaboration with two co-officers per our technical, social impact, and executive team. Our club has maintained successful officer transitions for over five years, as elections are held each winter quarter, providing a full spring quarter for training and mentorship before new officers assume full responsibility.
Our club withstood COVID-19 because of organized documentation to help transfer knowledge when attendance dipped. Our current leadership has revitalized recruitment and engagement, demonstrated through an active social media presence, regular tabling, and guest speaker events. As a result, club attendance has grown by 20% over the past year.
Problem statement
Many of the microgrid systems we work with are deployed on the other side of the world where we can’t access them directly: making remote monitoring a critical tool. As we have helped partners deploy solar microgrid systems globally to serve under-privileged communities, we identified two prominent problems: the high cost of mobile data and difficulties maintaining the system abroad. Our partners have had multiple experiences with their SIM cards filling too quickly and being unable to perform some upgrades/troubleshooting without access to the physical hardware. PETS directly addresses key challenges—reducing data costs and designing a more interactive and reliable monitoring platform.
Our project leverages the UW community’s technical expertise to address these challenges in a sustainable and scalable way. Sending students abroad is costly and not environmentally sustainable, but we can still make meaningful contributions by developing and testing innovative tools locally at UW. By engaging students in informatics, engineering, and other sustainability-focused disciplines, we can rapidly prototype and improve our datalogger systems through direct, hands-on access to the hardware. This approach empowers UW students to advance sustainability efforts in under-resourced regions while maintaining a financially responsible and environmentally conscious model.
Problem context
The University of Washington hosts several solar-focused initiatives, such as UW Solar, which emphasizes energy generation and accessible solar infrastructure. However, most existing programs are either research-driven at the graduate level or centered on design and policy rather than hands-on technical learning. Our project bridges this gap by creating an interdisciplinary, student-led platform where participants from any major can engage directly with renewable energy systems through our solar microgrid and datalogger project. We aim to complement ongoing UW efforts by collaborating with UW Solar and software-oriented clubs to refine our GUI and data analysis tools. Through these partnerships, we can create shared technical resources that support broader solar and sustainability efforts across campus.
Beyond collaboration, our initiative contributes to UW’s sustainability education ecosystem by offering experiential learning opportunities and public demonstrations. By hosting workshops and tours of our physical microgrid, we hope to demystify distributed energy systems and promote awareness of their potential in rural electrification. This approach supports UW’s mission of collective climate action—fostering both community education and technical innovation in sustainable development.
Measure the impacts
| Impact / goal | Metric(s) of success | UW stakeholders impacted |
|---|---|---|
| Create a fully-functioning microgrid that works as planned and is able to collect and store solar energy. | 200 kWh generated in 6 months | Undergraduate |
| Establish a robust database system that is able to store all of the data taken from the panel and sensors with a GUI that makes the information clear and accessible. | Over 1000 sensor datapoints logged every day | Undergraduate |
Communication tactics and tools
Our communication strategy focuses on outreach, visibility, and engagement through both digital and in-person channels. We maintain an active presence on Instagram and Medium, where we share project updates, sustainability insights, and event recaps to reach students across disciplines. These platforms help us build community and maintain consistent engagement beyond in-person meetings.
We also participate in tabling events such as the Student Activities Fair, where we recently gathered over 15 new sign-ups and attracted more than 20 attendees to our first meeting. This visibility helps connect us with students who may not yet be involved in sustainability-related organizations.
Each quarter, we host workshops and speaker events to bring in participants who might not have heard of the club, but are interested in learning about clean energy. Past guests have included a talk from an Engineer from Seattle Public Utilities, Professor June Lukuyu, and local Solar Installer ‘Solterra.’ These events introduce attendees to real-world perspectives in clean energy and often draw participants who might not otherwise engage with the club.
Outreach communication plan
We plan to share our project’s progress and impact through social media updates, workshops, and collaborations with UW sustainability organizations such as UW Solar, Engineers Without Borders, and related student clubs. By publishing project insights on our Medium page and hosting hands-on demonstrations of our solar microgrid, we aim to make renewable energy technology more accessible to the wider UW community. Beneficiaries include students interested in sustainability, researchers seeking real-world data, and community partners exploring microgrid solutions. Our outreach emphasizes transparency, education, and collective learning to inspire broader participation in campus sustainability efforts.
Student involvement
Our project allows students to get hands-on experience with many skills useful in the professional sphere, like scientific communication, digital electronics interfacing, documentation, and programming. There is also a networking component with our collaboration with engineers from Kilowatts for Humanity.