Power and Energy Commons^™

Stimulating Electricity Demand To Enhance Sustainable Human Development In Sub-Saharan Africa, June M. Lukuyu

Doctoral Dissertations

Sub-Saharan Africa continues to aggressively pursue universal electricity access to drive economic development, improved health, literacy, food security, and gender equality. However, increasing electricity supply and household connections is only one important step towards achieving economic transformation. Countries in the region must also strive for increased use of energy services, not only by households but also for income-generating productive uses and community facilities. Unfortunately, unlike the other regions in the world, increasing electricity access rates in sub-Saharan Africa have not been met with complementary growth in electricity consumption density. Therefore, contrary to the energy efficiency zeitgeist in industrialized regions, countries …

Models And Machine Learning Techniques For Improving The Planning And Operation Of Electricity Systems In Developing Regions, Santiago Correa Cardona

Doctoral Dissertations

The enormous innovation in computational intelligence has disrupted the traditional ways we solve the main problems of our society and allowed us to make more data-informed decisions. Energy systems and the ways we deliver electricity are not exceptions to this trend: cheap and pervasive sensing systems and new communication technologies have enabled the collection of large amounts of data that are being used to monitor and predict in real-time the behavior of this infrastructure. Bringing intelligence to the power grid creates many opportunities to integrate new renewable energy sources more efficiently, facilitate grid planning and expansion, improve reliability, optimize electricity …

Improving The Programmability Of Networked Energy Systems, Noman Bashir

Doctoral Dissertations

Global warming and climate change have underscored the need for designing sustainable energy systems. Sustainable energy systems, e.g., smart grids, green data centers, differ from the traditional systems in significant ways and present unique challenges to system designers and operators. First, intermittent renewable energy resources power these systems, which break the notion of infinite, reliable, and controllable power supply. Second, these systems come in varying sizes, spanning over large geographical regions. The control of these dispersed and diverse systems raises scalability challenges. Third, the performance modeling and fault detection in sustainable energy systems is still an active research area. Finally, …

Data-Driven Control, Modeling, And Forecasting For Residential Solar Power, Akansha Singh Bansal

Doctoral Dissertations

Distributed solar generation is rising rapidly due to a continuing decline in the cost of solar modules. Most residential solar deployments today are grid-tied, enabling them to draw power from the grid when their local demand exceeds solar generation and feed power into the grid when their local solar generation exceeds demand. The electric grid was not designed to support such decentralized and intermittent energy generation by millions of individual users. This dramatic increase in solar power is placing increasing stress on the grid, which must continue to balance its supply and demand despite the potential for large solar fluctuations. …

Data-Driven Decarbonization Of Residential Heating Systems: An Equity Perspective., John Wamburu, Emma Grazier, David Irwin, Christine Crago, Prashant Shenoy

Publications

Since heating buildings using natural gas, propane and oil makes up a significant proportion of the aggregate carbon emissions every year, there is a strong interest in decarbonizing residential heating systems using new technologies such as electric heat pumps. In this poster, we conduct a data-driven optimization study to analyze the potential of replacing gas heating with electric heat pumps to reduce carbon emissions in a city-wide distribution grid. We seek to not only reduce the carbon footprint of residential heating, but also show how to do so equitably. Our results show that lower income homes have an energy usage …

A Moment In The Sun: Solar Nowcasting From Multispectral Satellite Data Using Self-Supervised Learning, Akansha Singh Bansal, Trapit Bansal, David Irwin

Publications

ABSTRACT

Solar energy is now the cheapest form of electricity in history. Unfortunately,

signi.cantly increasing the electric grid’s fraction of

solar energy remains challenging due to its variability, which makes

balancing electricity’s supply and demand more di.cult. While

thermal generators’ ramp rate—the maximum rate at which they

can change their energy generation—is .nite, solar energy’s ramp

rate is essentially in.nite. Thus, accurate near-term solar forecasting,

or nowcasting, is important to provide advance warnings to

adjust thermal generator output in response to variations in solar

generation to ensure a balanced supply and demand. To address the

problem, this paper develops a …

Vpeak: Exploiting Volunteer Energy Resources For Flexible Peak Shaving, Phuthipong Bovornkeeratiroj, John Wamburu, David Irwin, Prashant Shenoy

Publications

Traditionally, utility companies have employed demand response for large loads or deployed centralized energy storage to alleviate the effects of peak demand on the grid. The advent of Internet of Things (IoT) and the proliferation of networked energy devices have opened up new opportunities for coordinated control of smaller residential loads at large scales to achieve similar benefits. In this paper, we present VPeak, an approach that uses residential loads volunteered by their owners for coordinated control by a utility for grid optimizations. Since the use of volunteer resources comes with hard limits on how frequently they can be used …

Peaktk: An Open Source Toolkit For Peak Forecasting In Energy Systems, Phuthipong Bovornkeeratiroj, John Wamburu, David Irwin, Prashant Shenoy

Publications

As the electric grid undergoes the transition to a carbon free future, many new techniques for optimizing the grid’s energy usage and carbon footprint are being designed. A common technique used by many approaches is to reduce the energy usage of the grid’s peak demand periods since doing so is beneficial for reducing the carbon usage of the grid. Consequently, the design of peak forecasting methods that predict when and how much peak demand will be seen is at the heart of many energy optimization approaches. In this paper, we present PeakTK, an open-source toolkit and reference datasets for peak …

Breaking Wave Hazard Estimation Model For The U.S. Atlantic Coast, Spencer T. Hallowell

Publications

As offshore wind development is in its infancy along the U.S. Atlantic Coast challenges arise due to the effects of strong storms such as hurricanes. Breaking waves on offshore structures induced by hurricanes are of particular concern to offshore structures due to high magnitude impulse loads caused by wave slamming. Prediction of breaking wave hazards is important in offshore design for load cases using long mean return periods of environmental conditions. A breaking wave hazard estimation model (BWHEM) is introduced that provides a means for assessing breaking hazard at long mean return periods over a large domain along the U.S. …

Robust And Sustainable Energy Pathways To Reach Mexico’S Climate Goals, Rodrigo Mercado Fernandez

Doctoral Dissertations

As countries set climate change goals for adaptation and mitigation efforts, there are many questions regarding to how to reach these targets. These efforts will necessitate the transition of our electricity infrastructure from relying on conventional electricity generation technologies including natural gas, coal and oil, to clean energy generation with renewables. Through the three essays presented in this dissertation, we explore various pathways of development for the electricity system to reach long term climate change goals. We are interested in identifying: Is there a unique optimal development option or are there various? How do different mixes of electricity generation technologies …

Software-Defined Infrastructure For Iot-Based Energy Systems, Stephen Lee

Doctoral Dissertations

Internet of Things (IoT) devices are becoming an essential part of our everyday lives. These physical devices are connected to the internet and can measure or control the environment around us. Further, IoT devices are increasingly being used to monitor buildings, farms, health, and transportation. As these connected devices become more pervasive, these devices will generate vast amounts of data that can be used to gain insights and build intelligence into the system. At the same time, large-scale deployment of these devices will raise new challenges in efficiently managing and controlling them. In this thesis, I argue that the IoT …

Function And Dissipation In Finite State Automata - From Computing To Intelligence And Back, Natesh Ganesh

Doctoral Dissertations

Society has benefited from the technological revolution and the tremendous growth in computing powered by Moore's law. However, we are fast approaching the ultimate physical limits in terms of both device sizes and the associated energy dissipation. It is important to characterize these limits in a physically grounded and implementation-agnostic manner, in order to capture the fundamental energy dissipation costs associated with performing computing operations with classical information in nano-scale quantum systems. It is also necessary to identify and understand the effect of quantum in-distinguishability, noise, and device variability on these dissipation limits. Identifying these parameters is crucial to designing …

Energy Efficiency Of Computation In All-Spin Logic: Projections And Fundamental Limits, Zongya Chen

Masters Theses

Built with nanomagnets, a spintronic device called the all-spin logic (ASL) device carries information with only spin currents, resulting in a low power supply--10 mV. This voltage is 100 times smaller than the conventional CMOS devices (usually 0.8~1V). The potential for improved energy efficiency made possible by the low operating voltage of ASL makes it one of the most promising devices among its post-CMOS competitors.

The basic working principles of ASL device are introduced in this thesis and two complementary approaches to studying energy efficiency of computation are applied to a common set of ASL circuits: (1) a circuit simulation …

Leveraging Eye Structure And Motion To Build A Low-Power Wearable Gaze Tracking System, Addison Mayberry

Doctoral Dissertations

Clinical studies have shown that features of a person's eyes can function as an effective proxy for cognitive state and neurological function. Technological advances in recent decades have allowed us to deepen this understanding and discover that the actions of the eyes are in fact very tightly coupled to the operation of the brain. Researchers have used camera-based eye monitoring technology to exploit this connection and analyze mental state across across many different metrics of interest. These range from simple things like attention and scene processing, to impairments such as a fatigue or substance use, and even significant mental disorders …

Hybrid Black-Box Solar Analytics And Their Privacy Implications, Dong Chen

Doctoral Dissertations

The aggregate solar capacity in the U.S. is rising rapidly due to continuing decreases in the cost of solar modules. For example, the installed cost per Watt (W) for residential photovoltaics (PVs) decreased by 6X from 2009 to 2018 (from $8/W to $1.2/W), resulting in the installed aggregate solar capacity increasing 128X from 2009 to 2018 (from 435 megawatts to 55.9 gigawatts). This increasing solar capacity is imposing operational challenges on utilities in balancing electricity's real-time supply and demand, as solar generation is more stochastic and less predictable than aggregate demand. To address this problem, both academia and utilities have …

Dynamic Range Limitations Of Low-Noise Microwave Transistors At Cryogenic Temperatures, Ahmet Hakan Coskun

Doctoral Dissertations

Dynamic range is an important metric that specifies the limits of input signal amplitude for the ideal operation of a given receiver. The low end of dynamic range is defined by the noise floor whereas the upper limit is determined by large-signal distortion. While dynamic range can be predicted in the temperature range where compact transistor models are valid, the lack of large-signal models at temperatures below -55 C prevents the prediction and optimization of dynamic range for applications that require cryogenic cooling. For decades, the main goal concerning the performance of these applications was lowering the noise floor of …

Integrated Solar Technologies With Outdoor Pedestrian Bridge Superstructure Decking, Richard K. Racz

Masters Theses

Solar technology has been a major topic in sustainable design for many years. In the last five years, however, the solar technology industry has seen a rapid growth in installations and technological advances in cell design. Combined with a rapidly declining overall system cost, the idea of introducing solar technology into a wider range of applications is becoming a focus for engineers and scientists around the world. So many variables which alter solar energy production, such as the sun and surrounding environment, determine whether a solar design is beneficial. This thesis presents a bridge deck surface integrated with solar cells …

Energy Agile Cluster Communication, Muhammad Zain Mustafa

Masters Theses

Computing researchers have long focused on improving energy-efficiency?the amount of computation per joule? under the implicit assumption that all energy is created equal. Energy however is not created equal: its cost and carbon footprint fluctuates over time due to a variety of factors. These fluctuations are expected to in- tensify as renewable penetration increases. Thus in my work I introduce energy-agility a design concept for a platform?s ability to rapidly and efficiently adapt to such power fluctuations. I then introduce a representative application to assess energy-agility for the type of long-running, parallel, data-intensive tasks that are both common in data …

Effect Of Clock And Power Gating On Power Distribution Network Noise In 2d And 3d Integrated Circuits, Vinay C. Patil

Masters Theses

In this work, power supply noise contribution, at a particular node on the power grid, from clock/power gated blocks is maximized at particular time and the synthetic gating patterns of the blocks that result in the maximum noise is obtained for the interval 0 to target time. We utilize wavelet based analysis as wavelets are a natural way of characterizing the time-frequency behavior of the power grid. The gating patterns for the blocks and the maximum supply noise at the Point of Interest at the specified target time obtained via a Linear Programming (LP) formulation (clock gating) and Genetic Algorithm …

Design And Evaluation Of An L-Band Current-Mode Class-D Power Amplifier Integrated Circuit, Michael J. Shusta

Masters Theses

Power amplifiers (PAs) convert energy from DC to high frequencies in all radio and microwave transmitter systems be they wireless base stations, handsets, radars, heaters, and so on. PAs are the dominant consumers of energy in these systems and, therefore, the dominant sources of system cost and inefficiency. Research has focused on efficient solid-state PA circuit topologies and their optimization since the 1960s. The 2000s saw the current-mode class-D (CMCD) topology, potentially suitable for today's wireless communications systems, show promise in the UHF frequency band. This thesis describes the design and testing of a high-efficiency CMCD amplifier with an integrated …

Umass Amherst Green Building Guidelines 2013, Ludmilla Pavlova-Gillham, Ted Mendoza, Ezra Small, Patricia O'Flaherty, Nariman Mostafavi, Mohamed Farzinmoghadam, Somayeh Tabatabaee Pozveh

Campus Planning Reports and Plans

Facilities & Campus Services, Sustainable UMass and Campus Planning support sustainability and energy conservation initiatives by providing in-house resources to campus staff as well as designers and contractors working with the University. The UMass Amherst Green Building Guidelines provide a framework for approaching new construction and major renovation projects at UMass Amherst that are undergoing LEED certification by focusing the conversation on green building aspects that are most important to the campus. They are intended to be the beginning of a dynamic conversation between designers, environmental consultants and constructors, university stakeholders, and users of new high performance buildings.

Low Cost Dynamic Architecture Adaptation Schemes For Drowsy Cache Management, Nitin Prakash

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Energy consumption and speed of execution have long been recognized as conflicting requirements for processor design. In this work, we have developed a low-cost dynamic architecture adaptation scheme to save leakage power in caches. This design uses voltage scaling to implement drowsy caches. The importance of a dynamic scheme for managing drowsy caches, arises from the fact that not only does cache behavior change from one application to the next, but also during different phases of execution within the same application. We discuss various implementations of our scheme that provide a tradeoff between granularity of control and design complexity. …

A Novel Reconfiguration Scheme In Quantum-Dot Cellular Automata For Energy Efficient Nanocomputing, Madhusudan Chilakam

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Quantum-Dot Cellular Automata (QCA) is currently being investigated as an alternative to CMOS technology. There has been extensive study on a wide range of circuits from simple logical circuits such as adders to complex circuits such as 4-bit processors. At the same time, little if any work has been done in considering the possibility of reconfiguration to reduce power in QCA devices. This work presents one of the first such efforts when considering reconfigurable QCA architectures which are expected to be both robust and power efficient. We present a new reconfiguration scheme which is highly robust and is expected to …

Load Hindcasting: A Retrospective Regional Load Prediction Method Using Reanalysis Weather Data, Jonathan D. Black

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

The capacity value (CV) of a power generation unit indicates the extent to which it contributes to the generation system adequacy of a region’s bulk power system. Given the capricious nature of the wind resource, determining wind generation’s CV is nontrivial, but can be understood simply as how well its power output temporally correlates with a region’s electricity load during times of system need. Both wind generation and load are governed by weather phenomena that exhibit variability across all timescales, including low frequency weather cycles that span decades. Thus, a data-driven determination of wind’s CV should involve the use of …

Investments In Energy Technological Change Under Uncertainty, Ekundayo Shittu

Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014

This dissertation addresses the crucial problem of how environmental policy uncertainty influences investments in energy technological change. The rising level of carbon emissions due to increasing global energy consumption calls for policy shift. In order to stem the negative consequences on the climate, policymakers are concerned with carving an optimal regulation that will encourage technology investments. However, decision makers are facing uncertainties surrounding future environmental policy. The first part considers the treatment of technological change in theoretical models.

This part has two purposes: (1) to show-through illustrative examples-that technological change can lead to quite different, and surprising, impacts on the …

Reliability Assessment Of A Power Grid With Customer Operated Chp Systems Using Monte Carlo Simulation, Lokesh Prakash Manohar

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

This thesis presents a method for reliability assessment of a power grid with distributed generation providing support to the system. The distributed generation units considered for this assessment are Combined Heat and Power (CHP) units operated by individual customers at their site. CHP refers to the simultaneous generation of useful electric and thermal energy. CHP systems have received more attention recently due to their high overall efficiency combined with decrease in costs and increase in reliability. A composite system adequacy assessment, which includes the two main components of the power grid viz., Generation and Distribution, is done using Monte Carlo …