PFI:BIC - Utility-driven Smart Energy Services

这种创新伙伴关系：建设创新能力（PFI：BIC）项目的重点是开发一个公用事业驱动的能源服务平台。由于建筑物消耗了社会总能源使用量的很大一部分，即使是建筑物能源效率的适度提高也有可能产生重大效益。 近年来，公用事业公司已经部署了数千万个智能电表，这些电表在短时间内记录建筑物的能源使用情况（例如，每隔几分钟）。 虽然智能电表的最初目的是支持基本的公用事业操作（例如，自动抄表阅读），该项目将其作为开发新型智能能源服务系统的基础。 具体来说，该项目的重点是分析来自公用事业智能电表和其他网络传感器的大量数据，以提高建筑物和电网的能源效率。 该研究是公用事业驱动的，因为公用事业公司具有i）访问大量客户能源数据的权限，ii）向客户提供分析结果的方法，以及iii）提高客户能源效率的强烈激励（例如，通过降低峰值需求来降低其自身的运营成本）。 这种方法是可扩展的，因为它利用了现有的建筑智能电表数据，而不需要安装新的智能设备和控制系统。该项目将开发公用事业驱动的智能能源服务，以提高电网能源效率，鼓励节能，并促进当地的可再生能源，如屋顶太阳能。研究方法包括为智能电表数据开发新的能源分析技术，以新颖的方式将这些技术结合起来创建提高能源效率的特定应用程序，将这些应用程序打包为最终用户可以访问的基于云的Web服务，并评估其对用户行为和能源效率的影响。 具体而言，该项目将开发三个特定的智能能源服务系统：i）iProgram，通过分析智能电表数据来确定最佳恒温器时间表; ii）绿色需求响应（Green-DR），根据可再生能源发电情况适时安排弹性负荷;以及iii）PowerTrip，向用户提供实时能源事件通知和建议的节能措施。 该项目将实现每个系统的原型，并根据来自18，000个智能电表的真实数据（匿名）对其进行评估。 该研究遵循人在环模型，将技术和用户行为研究整合到智能能源服务的设计和实施中。因此，该项目包括用户研究，以评估每项服务对用户的行为影响。更广泛的影响来自该项目与当地公用事业公司、一流的研究实验室（微软研究院）、小型初创公司（Budderfly）和环保意识强的非营利组织（WattTime.org）的工业合作伙伴关系。 这些合作伙伴关系将使学生接触到解决现实世界能源效率问题的行业观点，以及跨越技术和行为学科的跨学科研究。 该项目将通过新成立的马萨诸塞州绿色高性能计算中心，为当地K-12学生提供可持续性意识课程、本科REU项目和以可持续性为重点的外展工作。牵头机构是马萨诸塞州阿默斯特大学。 主要的行业合作伙伴是霍利奥克天然气和电力公司（HG E）（霍利奥克，马萨诸塞州），一家市政公用事业公司。 主要学术合作伙伴是马里兰大学-巴尔的摩县分校（马里兰州巴尔的摩）和威廉姆斯学院（马萨诸塞州威廉斯敦）。 更广泛的合作伙伴是微软（雷德蒙，华盛顿州），一个大企业，WattTime.org（伯克利，加利福尼亚州），一个非营利组织，和Budderfly（谢尔顿，CT），一个小企业。

This Partnerships for Innovation: Building Innovation Capacity (PFI:BIC) project focuses on the development of a utility-driven energy service platform. Since buildings consume a large fraction of society's total energy usage, even modest improvements in building energy efficiency have the potential to yield significant benefits. In recent years, utilities have deployed tens of millions of smart electric meters that record building energy usage over short intervals (e.g., every few minutes). While the original purpose of smart meters was to support basic utility operations (e.g., automated meter reading), this project uses them as the foundation for developing a new class of smart energy service systems. Specifically, the project focuses on analyzing the vast amount of data available from utility smart meters and other networked sensors to improve the energy efficiency of buildings and the electric grid. The research is utility-driven, since utilities have i) access to massive amounts of customer energy data, ii) a way to deliver the results of analytics to customers, and iii) strong incentives to improve customer energy efficiency (e.g., by reducing peak demand to reduce their own operational costs). The approach is scalable, since it leverages already available building smart meter data, rather than requiring the installation of new smart devices and control systems. The project will develop utility-driven smart energy services to improve grid energy efficiency, encourage energy conservation, and promote the local renewable energy sources, such as rooftop solar. The research methodology includes developing new energy analytic techniques for smart meter data, combining these in novel ways to create specific applications that improve energy efficiency, packaging those applications as cloud-based web services that are accessible to end users, and evaluating their impact on user behavior and energy efficiency. In particular, the project will develop three specific smart energy service systems: i) iProgram to determine optimal thermostat schedules by analyzing smart meter data, ii) Green Demand Response (Green-DR) to opportunistically schedule elastic loads to align with renewable energy generation, and iii) PowerTrip to provide real-time energy event notifications and suggested conservation actions to users. The project will implement a prototype of each system and evaluate them on real-world data (rendered anonymous) from 18,000 smart meters. The research follows a human-in-the-loop model that integrates technical and user behavioral research in the design and implementation of smart energy services. Thus, the project includes user studies to assess each service's behavioral impact on users.Broader impacts stem from the project's industrial partnerships with a local utility, a premier research lab (Microsoft Research), a small startup company (Budderfly), and an environmentally-conscious non-profit (WattTime.org). These partnerships will expose students to industry perspectives on addressing real-world energy-efficiency problems, and interdisciplinary research that spans technical and behavioral disciplines. The project will enable sustainability-aware curriculum, undergraduate REU projects, and sustainability-focused outreach efforts to local K-12 students through the newly established Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center.The lead institution is the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The primary industry partner is Holyoke Gas and Electric (HG&E)) (Holyoke, MA), a municipal utility. Primary academic partners are the University of Maryland-Baltimore County (Baltimore, MD) and Williams College (Williamstown, MA). Broader context partners are Microsoft (Redmond, WA), a large business, WattTime.org (Berkeley, CA), a non-profit, and Budderfly (Shelton, CT), a small business.