Welcoming New Students to the Energy Graduate Group
We are excited to welcome new students to the Energy Graduate Group this fall. The incoming cohort began their graduate journey with an immersive orientation known as the Power Trip, a week-long introduction to UC Davis and California’s dynamic energy landscape.
The Power Trip featured meetings with EEI and research center leadership, along with site visits to organizations at the forefront of the state’s clean energy transition, including CAISO, SMART Training Center in Fairfield, and Valley Clean Energy’s Putah Creek Solar Farm. Through the EGG program, students pursue MS and PhD degrees in Energy Systems, choosing tracks in Energy Science & Technology or Energy Policy & Management. With access to EEI’s research centers, faculty expertise, and industry partnerships, they are well positioned to become leaders in the energy transition.
We are thrilled to welcome this year’s cohort to the UC Davis energy community!
When the Heat Is On, the AC Stays On
During California’s record-breaking September 2022 heat wave, the grid came within minutes of rolling blackouts, until an emergency text to 27 million phones asked residents to cut back. UC Davis researchers analyzed smart-thermostat data from more than 10,000 homes and found that air conditioning use kept climbing even at temperatures up to 110 °F, so today’s AC systems aren’t too small to keep up. But when they compared homes that got the emergency alert with similar homes that didn’t, AC use barely changed. The sudden drop in statewide demand that evening came from somewhere else, which makes it harder for grid planners to count on residential cooling cutbacks in the next, hotter heat wave.
WCEC Attends Green California Summit
WCEC’s Market Transformation Research Program researcher Emily Searl attended the Green California Summit in Pasadena. She showcased the Empower Procurement Hub website and talked to potential users from K-12, Government, and Higher Education.
What’s Behind the Breaker? A Look at How Americans Label Their Electrical Panels
The electrical panel is the gateway to home electrification. Before adding a heat pump or EV charger, someone has to know which breaker controls what. UC Davis researchers collected photos of more than 400 electrical panels from homes across the U.S. and found that labeling is all over the map. About two-thirds had a directory on the panel door, but many were incomplete, vague, or hard to read, and fewer than half had labels on the individual breakers. The study makes the case for clearer, more complete labeling to support safer maintenance and smoother upgrades.
Turning Energy Challenges into Business Solutions
In the UC Davis Graduate School of Management’s Sustainable Energy Industry Immersion, Full-Time and Flex MBA students work with graduate students across disciplines to tackle real challenges posed by energy executives. The hands-on experience connects UC Davis energy expertise with the business leaders of tomorrow.
The Hidden Cost of Oversized Equipment
From air conditioners to electrical panels to data centers, engineers routinely specify equipment bigger than the job requires, to cover uncertainty, future growth, or plain caution. The result is wasted capital and, because most equipment spends most of its life running well below full capacity, wasted energy too. Researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the U.S. Department of Energy look at why oversizing is so common and group the ways to fix part-load inefficiency into three categories. They also propose a new Part-Load Metric: a single number that shows how far a device’s real-world efficiency falls from its design efficiency, so different technologies and solutions can be compared directly.
What Your Thermostat Schedule Says About You
Smart thermostats are a key tool for easing strain on the grid, but most demand-response programs treat every household as if it behaves the same way. Researchers from UC Berkeley, UC Davis, and Stanford analyzed nine years of thermostat data from 1,263 California households and sorted them into five behavioral types. Most homes (63%) are “Passive Defaults” who never change the factory settings. About 30% are “Active Customizers” who build their own schedules. The names people give their schedules (“Work,” “Peak Hours,” “Vacation”) turned out to predict their temperature settings and HVAC use, which gives utilities a new way to design programs that fit how people actually live.
Catch Up on Recent Events and Seminars Online
If you couldn’t join us for our Industry & Materials Decarbonization Symposium, Emerging Energy Professionals Seminar, Materials Decarbonization, or Demand Flex events, you can now watch them online. Catch up on this and other recent events and seminars anytime!