This award provides funding for a collaborative project between University of Massachussetes, Amherst and Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India. There has recently been an increasing focus on developing new technologies for a more sustainable future for our society. In this context, the design of new Information and Communication technologies hold particular promise for designing the sustainable systems of tomorrow. This project will address key research challenges in the design of a smarter and greener electric grid, specifically focusing on pervasive computing and communication issues that arise both in the ?core? and on the "edge" of the smart grid. The intellectual merit of the effort is to bring a multi-disciplinary approach to addressing problems in data collection, dissemination, monitoring, and demand-response for the grid, with a common theme being a data-driven methodology using data obtained from measurements to drive actuation/control, optimization or resource management to address problems for the smart grid and smart homes that interface with the grid. The project's activities span three inter-related topics: (i) measurement and monitoring for the smart-grid, (ii) data dissemination architectures for the smart grid and (iii) demand-response for smart residential and office buildings.
The broader impacts of this project include (i) industrial internship opportunities with industrial collaborators for student researchers, enabling them to work on practical problems in this area, (ii) developing a three-credit course on computing and networking technologies for the smart grid, offered jointly between UMass and IIT Bombay and building on the smart-grid reading group that has been jointly conducted for the past year, and (iii) organizing a smart grid workshop in Holyoke MA, an economically disadvantaged gateway city with a large minority population, and a municipally-owned hydroelectric utility.
The project is structured as, and will result in, an international collaboration between India and the US. Smart grid, smart homes and sustainability are important areas of research in both India and the USA; however there are numerous context-specific geographical issues that must be addressed in each country. Through collaboration and by leveraging each other?s insights, project participants will be able to develop research methods that are broadly applicable in international settings. US and Indian industry partners, which include utilities, research labs and power generation companies, will bring a real-world perspective to this project. This project is a part of pervasive communications and computing collaboration (PC3) initiative.
This project has performed research aimed at creating a "smarter" and "greener" electric grid. "Smarter" because information technology is leveraged to perform enhanced monitoring and control of both the internal operations of the electric grid, as well as to control "when" and "how" homes store/use electricity. "Greener" because with this control, energy is consumed at times when peak demand is lower, when energy can be produced more cleanly and efficiently. This project was led by UMass Amherst and the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, with industrial participation from IBM India Research Labs, TCS Labs, Holyoke Gas and Electric and C-DAC India. Intellectual Merit. We have developed new algorithms for determining where to place measurement devices within the power grid, to allow grid operators to most effectively and efficiently measure and monitor power grid networks; we have also developed new ultra-reliable communication protocols for the network used by operators to send and receive control information to remote devices that monitor and control the power grid. The second part of our work has focused on smartly controlling and optimizing how electricity is used within a building. This is a critical issue, since buildings consume more energy than either the industry or transportation sectors. We have measured, designed, developed and demonstrated the gains realizable from using sensor- and data-driven techniques to reduce peak energy usage in homes and buildings. A principal focus has been on the use of inexpensive batteries as energy "buffers" that can be used to reduce grid load during peak times. These techniques are particularly valuable with variable-rate, distributed generation capabilities provided by renewable energy sources. We have disseminated our results widely through conference and journal publications, and made data sets publicly available to other researchers. Broader Impact. The PIs mentored two graduate research assistants, who both recently completed their PhD degrees, and an undergraduate student who has since joined a graduate CS program. One of the graduate students did a research internship at IBM Research India, providing him with a "hands-on" international research experience. A clean energy innovation workshop was organized in Massachusetts jointly with a local grid operator, and a new "Smart Grid" class was developed and taught, jointly with IIT Bombay. More generally, the research in the design, control and analysis of efficient communication in grid monitoring and control, and of efficient energy storage/use at the grid’s edge has made important contributions towards developing the smart grid of a more energy-sustainable future.
