SE Seminar Series: Laura Jaramillo

• In-person event
• 5208, Richcraft Hall, Carleton University
• 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6

• Contact
• Christine May, christine.may@carleton.ca

This seminar presents insigths on community energy planing in cold climates, based on the research of Laura Jaramillo, research associate at the Alternative Pathways for the Energy Transition (APEX) Laboratory at Carleton University.

The presentation focuses on two main themes:

1.       Quantifying community energy preferences.

2.       Incorporating preferences into generation expansion planning.

Participants will gain practical insight into best practices for conducting energy surveys in remote communities, drawn from three real case studies in cold-climate regions of Canada. The seminar will also discuss methods to best capture and quantify community energy preferences, as how these can be integrated into technical energy optimization models that maximizes soial preferences within generation investment decisions.

By bridging social data and system-level modeling, this work demonstrates how community values can be embedded into long-term energy planning to support more inclusive and sustainable energy systems.

About the speaker: Laura Jaramillo works as a researcher in the Alternative Pathways for the Energy Transition (APEX) Laboratory at Carleton University, Laura is an alumna of the Master of Applied Science in Sustainable Energy at Carleton University and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Energy Engineering from Universidad Autonoma de Bucaramanga in Colombia.

Part of her work explores understanding and quantifying Indigenous communities’ preferences for energy technologies to later include them into energy system modelling. She has conducted fieldwork in northern communities to gather the social data, and gaining first-hand experience about the energy challenges in Canada’s cold and remote regions.

Prior to joining Carleton University, she worked in the Colombian wholesale electricity market field (utility and distributor sector – Ruitoque S.A. E.S.P.), where she supported market operations, price analysis for energy bids and offers, and the development of new bilateral energy contracts and operations of the existing ones.