Thursday, May 15th, 2025 | 12PM-1PM | EEI Conference Room
Afshan Qamar, Energy Systems PhD Candidate
JD Zhao, Energy Systems PhD Student
Join us this Thursday, May 15th at EEI for our Energy Bites lunch and a talk featuring two of our energy researchers sharing their latest work!
Protecting Panels and Saving Electricty Using Model-Predictive Control
Afshan Qamar, Energy Systems PhD Candidate
This project develops a two-layer control system strategy to optimize energy usage and ensure capacity limits in electrified buildings under dynamic pricing conditions. It demonstrates how coordinated load management, using both optimization-based MPC and rule-based control, can reduce energy costs, maintain system stability, and support decarbonization efforts by modulating and shedding flexible loads.
Afshan Qamar is a PhD candidate in Energy Systems at UC Davis, and Graduate student research assistant at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. Her current research focuses on building’s electrification, energy efficiency, and decarbonization, with an emphasis on demand-side flexibility, and energy management.
Infrastructure for AI: A Multiscale Framework for Data Center Efficiency, Supply-Side Planning, Demand Flexibility, and Resilience
JD Zhao, Energy Systems PhD Student
This work develops a multiscale framework to enhance data center sustainability under AI workloads by integrating efficiency metrics, demand-side flexibility, and investment-based supply planning. It demonstrates how coordinated strategies across temporal and spatial scales can reduce emissions, optimize energy use, and improve system resilience.
Jiadong (JD) Zhao is a PhD student in Energy Systems at UC Davis, and a Ph.D. intern at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). He holds an M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from UC Irvine. His current research focuses on data centers, with an emphasis on energy efficiency metrics, demand-side flexibility, and supply-side investment optimization. He is also an active founder exploring innovative energy solutions.
Lunch is provided for those that attend in-person! Please register in advance so we have an accurate head count.
