Trailblazing the Future of Sustainable Energy
CISE Faculty Affiliates Michael Caramanis, Michael Gevelber, and Lucy Hutyra Join Multidisciplinary Panel to Share Research Findings, Perspectives
In the midst of a dark evening, the Colloquium Room glowed with some of Boston University’s brightest minds, standing as a beacon for a more sustainable future. Researchers gathered on Wednesday, December 4th to share their most recent findings at the Accelerating the Energy Transition: Transformative Pathways to Decarbonization and Sustainability Research on Tap event, hosted by BU Institute for Sustainable Energy (ISE).
Since the Industrial Revolution, human activity has contributed to the 1/3 increase in climate change and global warming due to greenhouse gas emissions, such as carbon-dioxide and methane, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Many researchers at Boston University are looking toward more sustainable behavior. Gloria Waters, Vice President and Associate Provost for Research, and Peter Fox-Penner, Director of the Institute for Sustainable Energy and Professor of Practice at Questrom School of Business, commenced the event by emphasizing the importance of collaboration in advancing the cause of sustainable energy.
Eleven BU researchers from the Institute for Sustainable Energy, Questrom School of Business, College of Engineering, and School of Public Health discussed their findings. Three presenters were faculty affiliates of the Center for Information & 系统工程 (CISE): Professors Michael Caramanis, Michael Gevelber, and Lucy Hutyra.
Areas explored and presented included methane emissions detection, electric vehicle charging, coordinating renewable generation and new loads, high energy density batteries, improving sustainability in commercial buildings, decarbonization of buildings, public health consequences of the energy transition, nature-based solutions, sustainable water management, and just transitions. It is the interplay of these topics that will shape the future of industries, cities, and homes.
Professor Michael Caramanis (ME, SE) is also a faculty affiliate of ISE. During the panel discussion, he discussed the benefits of scheduling Electric Vehicle (EV) Battery Charging in coordination with volatile renewable generation distribution and network costs. He brought up the significant disadvantages of simply charging EVs as soon as they connect to a power supply. The likelihood of synchronized EV charging may result in overloading and damaging network assets (in particular retail-load service-transformers), and in expensive line losses. Moreover, serious imbalance between volatile renewable generation and demand can threaten the stability of Transmission and Distribution Networks that allow sharing of cost efficient and clean generation by all interconnected entities, no matter how close or far they are located from each other.
Caramanis’ research combines both economic and engineering considerations. His investigations aim at exploiting the potential synergies of inexpensive, clean, albeit volatile, renewable generation with storage-like loads such as Battery Charging EVs that are capable of scheduling their consumption across time and location in a manner that bypasses national as well as local infrastructure bottlenecks.
“The key to achieving these synergistic advantages is to expand the cybercapabilities of the electric grid: extensive real-time network state identification, communication, and optimal coordination of interconnected supply and demand. The resulting active-smart-grid will be able to identify marginal costs and trade them off to schedule storage-like-loads optimally, and allow massive adoption of renewable generation and transportation electrification. And all this, will be achievable at sustainable environmental, energy supply reliability, and cost conditions,” Caramanis said.
Although a centralized approach to achieving this coordination may be contemplated, a decentralized voluntary approach is more likely to provide a lasting and socially acceptable solution based on efficient economic incentives to individual EVs. The success of electric vehicles as an alternative to today’s internal combustion engine dominated transportation reality will depend on the ability of EVs to coordinate with the electricity grid and the ability of cities to provide the requisite charging infrastructure and efficient market based economic incentives.
Z. Justin Ren, Associate Professor of Operations and Technology Management at Questrom, spoke about the effectiveness of monetary incentives in changing behavior toward adopting electric vehicles across the world. In Beijing, for example, those with electric vehicles can acquire a license faster than those without, Ren said.
Electric vehicle charging is not the only focus for improving sustainable energy use currently being explored. The research focus of Associate Professor Michael Gevelber (MSE, ME, SE) is reducing commercial building energy use while also improving indoor air quality.
Two main thrusts in Gevelber’s presentation were designing new HVAC control architectures and measuring air leakage in buildings, He focuses on commercial buildings since they account for 37% of electricity use and HVAC systems account for 40-60% of building energy. Funded under DOE’s Building America program, he is developing a new systems based method to measure both external and internal air leaks in residential buildings. “Why do we care about this? Air that leaks out to the exterior increases your energy use, but air leakage that happens between apartments decreases your indoor air quality,” Gevelber said. Both projects utilize BU buildings as research platforms, conducted in collaboration with BU facilities, and provides students with a unique opportunity to see how engineering knowledge applies to real world problems.
His HVAC research raises the question of what air quality standard is needed to live a healthy life. Humans spend the majority of their time indoors, making air quality a matter of public health. Gevelber recognized this as a research opportunity to collaborate with the School of Public Health.
Restructuring indoor structures has the potential to reduce energy usage and waste, yet a solution to decarbonization could also be in the backyard as examined in Lucy Hutyra’s research. Hutyra, Associate Professor of Earth and Environment, has made Boston her own laboratory. From measuring gas emissions on the roof of the College of Arts and Sciences to examining greenspaces in her hometown of Arlington, Hutyra is branching out to new developments in global warming through examining water movement through trees.
Hutyra’s group used the Bowen ratio, or the ratio of sensible to latent heat, to portray the potential of trees to cool down temperatures in her presentation. “Trees cool much more than we thought they did,” said Hutyra. “In these models, we assume that plants run out of water. In cities, like Boston, they don’t actually run out of water, the biological constraints are loosened through our management practices.”
As presenters came from all different research focuses, this event was ideal in providing a forum to share and discuss innovations and outcomes in hope of a more sustainable future.
Speaker slides available: /research/files/2019/12/Research-on-Tap-Accelerating-the-Energy-Transition-Slides.pdf