In the Fall 2021 semester, EEMI Professors Saniya LeBlanc, Ekundayo Shittu and Payman Dehghanian landed a grant from the US DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy to analyze the GW Foggy Bottom Campus energy management system to determine how urban centers with diverse energy sources can integrate new technology and tackle modern energy challenges.
The team is using the campus's energy management system as a “living laboratory” to determine how an urban energy system will hold up to challenges like a major heatwave that taxes the system, or a storm that causes a grid outage. The two-year project builds on five years of previous work analyzing and modeling the Ross Hall power plant that provides electricity, heating and cooling for four campus buildings, and building collaborations across GW.
The team has gathered data about water, natural gas and electricity being used by many buildings on campus, often manually checking meters and sifting through utility bills to collect the information they need. As part of their research, the team has created a clickable map that shows key buildings on campus and the energy they use. That data is shared with the university to inform decisions about future sustainability initiatives and real-time decision-making about how to respond to weather events or power outages.
EEM Master of Science graduate Mansi Talwar, now GW’s Executive Director of Engineering, Utilities and Energy, noted that the partnership it combines the university’s core missions of teaching and research with its ambitious sustainability goals that will help GW make progress toward its goal of carbon neutrality by 2040.