What Your Thermostat Schedule Says About You
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.
From Traveler Choices to Network Decisions: Behavior-Aware Optimization for Smart Mobility
Traveler choices shape network flows, while network conditions and mobility service operations influence those choices. Together, these interactions determine not only accessibility and congestion but also transportation energy use, making behavior-aware optimization essential for designing efficient and sustainable mobility systems. Logit-based choice models are often embedded in optimization through nonlinear constraints or bilevel formulations, creating computational difficulties […]
Advancing Energy Innovation in California
This energy seminar will provide an overview of technology innovation and research activities supported through the California Energy Commission that are advancing the state’s clean energy and climate goals, including in the areas of clean energy supply, energy storage, electrification, energy efficiency, demand flexibility, sustainable transportation, building and industrial decarbonization, and the climate-energy nexus. Jonah Steinbuck […]
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.
Getting Retail Electricity Prices Right in an Energy Transition
Decarbonization depends on households switching from fossil fuels to electricity, so the price of electricity is a crucial lever. In such a context, how should prices be set? Economists default to a simple rule: price each kilowatt-hour at its social marginal cost, which is the cost of providing one more unit of electricity to a […]
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.
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.
From Snapshots to Pathways: Optimizing Sector-Coupled Energy System Transitions Within Planetary Boundaries
Energy system optimization is a key tool for designing sector-coupled energy systems. But what should we optimize, over which time horizon, and how do we handle uncertainties inherent in planning decades ahead? This talk addresses these three questions. First, objectives: beyond cost, we integrate life cycle assessment to capture environmental impacts along supply chains. We […]
When the Heat Is On, the AC Stays On
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.
UC Davis Energy News: September 2026
Welcome our new EGG students, 4 new research papers, and more!