Irwin, David
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Assistant Professor, Department of Electrial & Computer Engineering, College of Engineering
Last Name
Irwin
First Name
David
Discipline
Electrical and Computer Engineering
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Cyber-Physical Systems, Sustainability and Green Computing, Next-generation Clouds and Networks, Embedded Sensor Systems
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Publication VPeak: Exploiting Volunteer Energy Resources for Flexible Peak Shaving(2021-01-01) Bovornkeeratiroj, Phuthipong; Wamburu, John; Irwin, David; Shenoy, PrashantTraditionally, utility companies have employed demand response for large loads or deployed centralized energy storage to alleviate the effects of peak demand on the grid. The advent of Internet of Things (IoT) and the proliferation of networked energy devices have opened up new opportunities for coordinated control of smaller residential loads at large scales to achieve similar benefits. In this paper, we present VPeak, an approach that uses residential loads volunteered by their owners for coordinated control by a utility for grid optimizations. Since the use of volunteer resources comes with hard limits on how frequently they can be used by a remote utility, we present machine learning techniques for carefully selecting which days to operate these loads based on expected peak demand. VPeak uses a distributed and heterogeneous pool of volunteer loads to implement flexible peak shaving that can either selectively target hotspots within the distribution network or perform grid-wide peak shaving. Our results show that VPeak is able to shave up to 26% of the total demand when selectively shaving peaks at local hotspots and up to 46.7% of the demand for grid-wide peak shaving.Publication Equity-aware Decarbonization of Residential Heating Systems(2022-01-01) Wamburu, John; Bashir, Noman; Grazier, Emma; Irwin, David; Crago, Christine; Shenoy, PrashantMost buildings still rely on fossil energy — such as oil, coal and natural gas — for heating. This is because they are readily available and have higher heat value than their cleaner counterparts. However, these primary sources of energy are also high pollutants. As the grid moves towards eliminating CO2 emission, replacing these sources of energy with cleaner alternatives is imperative. Electric heat pumps — an alternative and cleaner heating technology — have been proposed as a viable replacement. In this paper, we conduct a data-driven optimization study to analyze the potential of reducing carbon emission by replacing gas-based heating with electric heat pumps. We do so while enforcing equity in such transition. We begin by conducting an in-depth analysis into the energy patterns and demographic profiles of buildings. Our analysis reveals a huge disparity between lower and higher income households. We show that the energy usage intensity for lower income homes is 24% higher than higher income homes. Next, we analyze the potential for carbon emission reduction by transitioning gas-based heating systems to electric heat pumps for an entire city. We then propose equity-aware transition strategies for selecting a subset of customers for heat pump-based retrofits which embed various equity metrics and balances the need to maximize carbon reduction with ensuring equitable outcomes for households. We evaluate their effect on CO2 emission reduction, showing that such equity-aware carbon emission reduction strategies achieve significant emission reduction while also reducing the disparity in the value of selected homes by 5× compared to a carbon-first approach.