In May, Cascade announced Kwame Donkor, a second-year PhD student in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Washington, would receive the annual scholarship it sponsors through the Renewable Energy Scholarship Foundation (RESF).
On May 5, Cascadians Victoria Sonoda-Casper, Executive Assistant, and Erik Holman, Executive Vice President of Operations and Delivery, traveled to Seattle, Washington to attend the 2025 RESF Scholarship Awards Luncheon honoring Donkor and the other scholarship recipients. Donkor was awarded $7,000 to support the remainder of his PhD program.
“I was amazed at the enthusiasm, smarts, creativity, camaraderie, and thoughtfulness of the approximately 30 recipients of the RESF scholarships presented during the awards event,” Holman said. “The diversity of the candidates—both in their backgrounds and in their areas of technical expertise and academic pursuits are truly inspiring!”
Cascade sponsors a scholarship with RESF annually, which is a 501(c)(3) public non-profit that provides undergraduate and graduate college-level academic scholarships to students who demonstrate success in their academic pursuits related to any aspect of renewable energy, including the sciences and complementary fields like public policy, law, economics, and sociology. Cascade’s scholarship is reserved for members of underrepresented or historically marginalized groups, or for those who have demonstrated a commitment to diversity, inclusion, and leadership.
Donkor’s research investigates the intersection of extreme weather events, grid infrastructure, and climate vulnerabilities, with a focus on quantifying power grid reliability across diverse neighborhoods in Sub-Saharan Africa. By leveraging data analytics and geospatial methods, his work aims to inform equitable power restoration and the design of more reliable and sustainable energy systems through renewable energy integration.
As a high schooler growing up in Ghana, West Africa, Donkor witnessed his country grappling with a severe power crisis, characterized by frequent outages and a nationwide weekly load-shedding schedule, he wrote in his scholarship application.
“These disruptions, coupled with my growing knowledge as an aspiring Electrical Engineer, fueled my determination to understand the root causes of Ghana’s persistent power sector challenges and explore feasible, cost-effective solutions,” he wrote.
After completing his undergraduate degree, Donkor spent six years working at Process & Plant Automation Limited (PPA), a leading provider of electrical services and industrial automation in Ghana, where he led the installation of residential and commercial off-grid and grid-tied solar PV systems aimed at reducing customer energy bills and shielding them from power outages. In that role, he led a 33kV, 2MW grid-tied solar PV plant installation for a major agro-processing company in Kumasi, as the commissioning engineer. The system featured 33 50kW smart, grid-tied inverters, a SCADA monitoring station, and high-voltage switchgear equipped with remote monitoring, control, and advanced protection systems. The system was projected to save the company approximately $576,000 annually in energy costs.
“On a personal level,” Donkor wrote, “I applied my expertise to address the power challenges at my family residence by designing and installing a 5kW off-grid solar PV and battery system. The success of these projects highlighted the transformative potential of clean and renewable energy in addressing power sector challenges, from small-scale to large-scale initiatives.”
From there, he decided to pursue graduate studies through the University of Washington’s PhD program in Electrical & Computer Engineering. He joined Professor June Lukuyu’s Interdisciplinary Energy Analytics for Society lab, focusing on the intersection between clean energy generation and the equitable distribution of and access to that power.
Donkor wrote that he was blown away by the sheer scale of the electric system in the United States. For comparison, the hydroelectric power generated at Grand Coulee Dam could meet all of Ghana’s current power demand.
Through his research, Donkor is identifying the areas most vulnerable to the combined impacts of poor grid resilience, extreme weather events, and social vulnerabilities in the Greater Accra region of Ghana in order to develop a context-specific composite metric that quantifies these interconnected factors to inform more targeted and equitable resilience planning. Donkor is motivated by the persistent challenges plaguing the power grid in Ghana, which he sees exacerbated by aging infrastructure, rapid urbanization, escalating wealth inequalities, rising temperatures, and increasing frequency of flooding and unpredictable rainfall patterns. Much of the existing research on grid resilience and extreme weather has been conducted in North America and focuses on weather phenomena not experienced in Sub-Saharan Africa, such as hurricanes or snowstorms.
“Consequently, their findings, though valuable, are not directly applicable to the African context,” Donkor wrote. “The aim of this study is for its findings to be utilized by key stakeholders in the power sector to identify hotspots or vulnerable areas, particularly those with low-income populations and poor grid resilience, that are disproportionately affected by recent extreme weather events, to guide targeted interventions.”
Donkor is already witnessing the effect of these inequities in Ghana. In 2024, the local electric provider increased its rates by 3% to accommodate for technical and commercial losses in its operations to the tune of 32%. This rate increase will have a disproportionate impact on an already economically strained population, and it highlights the need for grid modernization and the incorporation of additional renewable energy sources, Donkor wrote. To date, Ghana is behind on its target to increase the renewable energy share of its grid by over 30% by 2030.
Given the complexity of these challenges, pursuing a context-specific approach is crucial, Donkor wrote.
“The early findings from my research underscore the urgent need to address the power sector challenges through a multi-faceted approach, encompassing technical, policy, and operational aspects,” he wrote.
Donkor’s aspirations to create positive change do not end with the Ghanian power sector, though.
Growing up in Ghana, West Africa, Donkor also witnessed the effect economic inequalities had on his access to education compared with his friends and neighbors. While he came from a family who could afford quality education, one of his closest friends and classmates in college came from a low-income background. This friend’s early education was affected by under-resourced schools that lacked science labs or reliable electricity, Donkor wrote. His friend attended the university thanks to a scholarship, becoming the first in his family to pursue higher education.
In response to witnessing these inequities as a young man, Donkor was inspired to create changes where he could. He founded an annual initiative to conduct outreach to vulnerable populations in Accra, focusing on inspiring the next generation of students to pursue careers in STEM. In the first year of the program, Donkor and his team provided food and drink to children and adults experiencing homelessness in Accra. The next year, they set their sights on addressing gender inequity in education and spent a day with 120 girls through a junior high school science club.
“We engaged a foundational learning expert to speak to the girls about the importance of life-long curiosity, reading, and broadening one’s horizon,” Donkor wrote. “We inspired the students to believe there were no limits to what they could achieve, whether in STEM or any other field.”
During his 2025 spring quarter at the University of Washington, Donkor led a team at a NASA-funded STEM Alternative Spring Break Program at the Quileute Tribal School. The program, provided through the University of Washington, organizes outreach to students in kindergarten through their senior year of high school to promote STEM education and mitigate inequity in tribal schools around Washington State.
Cascade has been sponsoring scholarships through RESF since 2023. One of its co-founders and board members, Rob Morton, is the RESF Treasurer and launched the annual scholarship sponsorship. The scholarship selection committee is comprised of nine professionals working in renewable energy or related fields, including Tracie Tran, a Senior Engineering Manager at Cascade.
“Every year, I’m always impressed by all the applicants we have,” Tran said. “I’m part of the team that reviews the undergrad applicants, so we get to read essays from folks that are applying to grad school or just starting off at community college. We had 34 students fall into the undergrad category, and they were able to give eight undergrad scholarships and six honorable mentions. The scholarship amount increased this year too, which was exciting because I know it will make a bigger impact for these students.”
Since 2016, RESF has supported over 130 students through its scholarships.
Donkor recently completed his qualifying exams and is finalizing his research paper. This summer, he will be interning with Schweitzer Engineering Labs. After graduating, Donkor hopes to pursue a career in consultancy, focusing on energy policy and strategic planning in the fields of grid resilience, energy justice, renewable energy, and its effective integration into conventional power systems.
“I also aim to interweave components of sustainable development, social equity, and climate resilience into my work, ensuring that energy solutions not only meet technical and economic goals but also address the broader societal and environmental challenges of our time,” he wrote.
