Stretching our existing energy resources is the most conservative way to make supply and demand balance out. We anticipate cars that cover the distance on less gas, appliances that drain less power, and facilities that are capable of recapturing resources that would otherwise be wasted.
Optimizing how we manage the flow of electricity already generated by current power sources is one challenge that energy-grid engineers at UMass Dartmouth are pursuing. Forward-looking technology researchers are also designing devices that do more but use less power. Thanks to green building advances, homeowners and businesses will soon find it commonplace and affordable for new structures to run on alternative energies and have automatic energy-conserving features included.
Advances in Conserving Resources
Current Research: Electrical Systems and Computer Models
Developing and implementing energy management and efficiency technologies promises to substantially reduce our electricity and energy consumption. Energy efficiency systems rely on increasingly accurate demand prediction models, coupled with software technologies to deploy successful demand response mechanisms. UMass Dartmouth developing electrical systems to support electrical grid reliability and capacity.
Contact: Prof. Les Cory, Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, www.umassd.edu/engineering/ece/
Current Research: Energy-Efficient Monitoring
Wireless sensor network promise to revolutionize security and surveillance, smart classrooms, monitoring of natural habitats, and medical monitoring. A wireless sensor network is a marvel of micro-engineering. It consists of inexpensive, low-power nodes with embedded processors, radios, sensors, and actuators, often integrated on a single chip. The small-sized sensors are easy to package in monitoring applications, and are economical in terms of energy resources, computational power, and storage. UMass Dartmouth engineers are investigating different network performance scenarios.
Contact: Prof. Deepti Jain and Dr. Vinod M. Vokkarane, Department of Computer and Information Science: www.umassd.edu/engineering/cis/
