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Instructor Profile
SPARE—Solar Power as Renewable Energy
Biography for Dr. Gay E. Canough
Education: BS in physics, Purdue University, 1980
Ph.D. in particle physics, U of Notre Dame, 1987
Currently employed by: Extraterrestrial Materials, Inc. (ETM Solar Works) doing design and installation of solar energy systems (company founder, 1988-present)
Experience: Conducted the PV Installers Course over 100 times. The course on how to install solar electric systems has been offered in New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. (2000-present) Certified Master Trainer (Institute for Sustainable Power; see www.irecusa.org)
Designed and installed solar electric systems and solar hot water systems, residential and commercial.
Designed and installed hardware, wrote software for performance monitoring of renewable energy systems. (Over 1 megawatt of PV installed since 1993). Certified PV Installer (North American Board of Certified Energy Practitioners; see www.nabcep.org).
Installed several small wind generators and performed repairs on existing wind generators. Completed wind studies for several sites.
Binghamton University-State University of New York, the Watson School of Engineering summer science and technology workshops for middle school students and teachers (1994 to 1999).
Carried out study of space solar power compared to terrestrial solar power under NASA contract (1996)
Conducted a study on the risks, real and perceived, of space solar power for the Space Studies Institute at Princeton (1992)
Binghamton University-State University of New York, Department of Physics: teaching of engineering physics, electronics and particle physics. (1990-1995)
Directed design projects at the International Space University (5 summers). Design projects included: Asteroid Prospecting, Mission to Mars, Lunar Polar Probe, Space Solar Power, ISUNET (use of internet for education). 1989 to 1993.
Managed the start-up the Lunar Prospector project (1989). Lunar Prospector successfully orbited the Moon collecting data for two years (98-99)
Conducted reliability analysis of fiber optics communications devices at IBM (1988-1989)
Completed experiments in particle physics at Fermilab (particle physics lab in Chicago, IL, USA) and CERN (particle physics lab in Switzerland). Wrote software in Fortran for data analysis. Designed and built many particle detectors. (graduate student, then faculty at U of Notre Dame, 1981 to 1987).
23 publications
Gay Canough is treasurer of the New York Solar Energy Industries Association (NYSEIA)
ETM is a member of the Southern Tier Home Builders and Remodelers Association, the Better Business Bureau, the Greater Binghamton Chamber of Commerce and NYSEIA.
