Internships

Rees Barnes ’26

Major

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Project Title

Investigating India’s Future Need for Electrical Power Transfer

I worked with the Energy Systems Analysis Group and the Zero-carbon Energy Systems Research and Optimization Laboratory to work toward decarbonizing India’s electricity grids. I used ArcGIS and other geographical information systems to map the country’s major grid infrastructure by applying geographical data to independent photos provided by India’s government. Then, I began investigating how shifting the locations of India’s power plants would affect the need for interregional power transfer capacity (i.e., the ability to share energy across different grid sections). This experience taught me a lot about the different kinds of research. Up to this point, my experiences largely focused on hard sciences, so working with non-physical data was initially challenging, but my appreciation for the work grew immensely, and I found myself enjoying it. I came into this internship solely interested in developing new energy technologies, but I left as someone more intrigued by the implementation and policy surrounding our global energy future.