Samer Chaaraoui: Doctoral examination passed with "very good"

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Smart electricity for remote clinics - energy that saves lives

On 13 August 2025, Samer Chaaraoui, former employee at the IZNE and lecturer at the IWK department, passed his doctoral examination at the PK-NRW as the third graduate of the "Sustainability and Resources" department with the grade "very good". The project was supervised by Stefanie Meilinger and co-supervised by Sebastian Houben from the department of informatics and data science and was thus the first PK NRW doctorate carried out in two departments. The title of his dissertation is "Development of a predictive control model for grid-integrated photovoltaic-diesel battery systems in the context of the Ghanaian health sector".

Samer Chaaraoui was part of the EnerSHelF team at IZNE from August 2019 to December 2022 and completed his doctorate in this context.

Chaaraoui used data collected from various health facilities in rural Ghana for his doctoral thesis. Here, the link between access to energy and ensuring sufficient reliability to reduce mortality rates is particularly relevant. This has a direct impact on the survival of vulnerable groups in rural regions of the Global South.

Diesel generators are currently the predominant solution for supplying power to isolated health facilities. However, they pose significant economic, environmental and health risks to the surrounding communities.

He researched how intelligent forecasting methods can improve the use of solar and diesel power in remote healthcare facilities. With the help of AI and open source tools, the energy flow is controlled in such a way that the power supply becomes more reliable, cheaper and more environmentally friendly - and lives can be saved as a result.

Samer Chaaraoui is currently Assistant Manager in the Artificial Intelligence department at KPMG.

Kontakt

Stefanie Meilinger

Professor for Sustainable Technologies, esp. Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energies, Director of the International Centre for Sustainable Development (IZNE), Department Engineering and Communication (IWK)

stefanie.meilinger@h-brs.de

Research fields

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F 321

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Prof. Dr Stefanie Meilinger

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Graduierteninstitut: Contact

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