CAREER: CAS- Climate: Improving the Participation of Diverse Residential Buildings in Demand Side Management

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This award is funded in whole or in part under the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (Public Law 117-2). As major consumers of energy and therefore a significant source of climate-impacting emissions, buildings are a prime target for improvements to support decarbonization goals. Grid-interactive buildings can support achieving such targets through acting as flexible loads in energy, capacity, and more recently, ancillary service electric grid markets. Such demand side management (DSM) strategies can reduce overall electricity needs, and support increased use of renewable energy. However, current building energy modeling methods are not well adapted to estimate DSM potential, as they do not represent the highly varied occupancy, internal load consumption behaviors, and energy preferences and priorities across U.S. households, nor do they consider their interdependencies. Rather, current methods model occupancy and internal loads independently, and assume “typical” schedules for all households regardless of their demographics. These limitations and generalizations are a problem as their use can result in solutions that misrepresent DSM participation and disproportionally benefit different populations. The extent to which variations in socioeconomic variables influence DSM potential, and how this can be appropriately modeled is not yet established in the current literature. Consequently, the overarching goal of this research is to develop an integrated framework to assess the DSM potential of diverse residential households, specifically targeting underserved, lower-income urban, rural, and remote populations. The primary educational goal is to educate the existing and future workforce in sustainable, smart buildings and demand side management. The developed educational tools, resources, and videos will address barriers to DSM participation, and support stakeholders implementing DSM. The effort includes three research goals: Develop models that consider the impact of socioeconomic factors on (R1) the maximum DSM potential of U.S. residential households, and (R2) willingness to participate in DSM and its relationship to occupancy and energy consumption patterns; (R3) validate the developed DSM scenarios through controlled laboratory testing to address potential occupant comfort barriers to DSM participation. The project will result in better estimates of DSM potential of residential buildings, with particular insights for low-income, energy burdened households, as well as a framework that can be used to evaluate DSM potential. This will support greater and more equitable DSM participation, also resulting in potential substantial environmental benefits. The educational effort will target three groups, the younger workforce, the future workforce, and the broader public with two main objectives: (E1): Emerging Workforce: Develop a smart, grid-interactive building certificate program, and training materials, targeted at students and emerging professionals. (E2a) Preschool/Elementary School Students and (E2b) Broader Public: Address misconceptions and barriers to engaging in sustainability and efficiency, through the development, testing, and dissemination of Mythbusters-style videos, curriculum materials, and case studies. The multi- faceted educational efforts will support all ages of students who make up the future workforce, as well as instructors that teach them. A certificate program will help reduce professional barriers to minorities in the workforce pipeline. Preschool/elementary programs will help increase awareness about sustainability, and encourage development of problem solving skills.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.