Apr. 25, 2017 –
The California Plug Load Research Center (CalPlug) hosted its 11th workshop on April 11 at CALIT2.
The morning sessions, titled “CAMPUS COOL – CalPlug and UCI” featured an update report on CalPlug projects as well as next steps planned for the center. Presenters discussed how CalPlug plans to take energy efficiency and sustainability to the next level, and explored CalPlug’s roadmap as well as what UCI is doing to remain one of the coolest campuses in the nation. Speakers included (click name to download presentation):
Michael Klopfer – CalPlug/ University of California, Irvine
Stephen Palm – Broadcom
Drew Chesen – Division of Continuing Education/University of California, Irvine
Audio for Session One: CLICK HERE
The workshop’s afternoon sessions, focused on the theme “Make America Great & Green Again.”
Presenters reported on navigating through the new Trump administration’s environmental policies and how California, and the nation, can continue environmental progress in the face of flagging federal support.
Dave Ashukian – California Energy Commission
John Morris – CHEER (Coalition for Home Electronics Energy Reduction)
David Feldman – University of California, Irvine
Audio for Session Two: CLICK HERE
A final session was devoted to the theme of California’s leadership in energy efficiency, and how industry is meeting the goals and targets of energy efficiency and sustainability.
Scott Kitcher – Sustain OC (formerly aka Cleantech OC)
Andrew Beauchamp – IBM
Audio for Session Three: CLICK HERE
At a reception following the workshop, more than a dozen undergraduate CalPlug researcher demonstrated their energy-saving projects to workshop attendees.
Undergraduate researcher, Sid Kasat (right) discusses his team’s project with Ken Lowe, Co-Founder, Vice President, Vizio (left). The presented project, Coffee Buddy is a system based on CalPlug’s IntelligE engine to provide substantial energy savings for commercial coffee machines in shared use environments. The team claims that the IntelligE technology produces a coffee maker that can run based on usage, substantially reducing energy usage while improving customer experience.
CalPlug undergraduate researcher, William Lin, presents his team’s demo to Dhawal Doshi, Sr. Engineer, SmartenIt. “Connected Energy Control“ will contain a network of devices to share information of each other, including device state, sensor input and power consumption. Using this shared data, each device, when working with others, will have extended “spatial-awareness” and be better able to detect and predict user engagement.
Dacoda Strack explains how his senior capstone project “No Tool Left: Behind” works to CalPlug Workshop attendees. The system is provides simple visual detection of any surgical instruments or sponges left in a body following a medical procedure.
Andrew Beauchamp from IBM (left) listens to the description of SmartMon. Undergraduate researchers, Aaron Zhang and William Floyd said that the goal of SmartMon is to develop a low cost system that uses load analysis to measure and track usage of classroom technology in pilot deployments. Technical administrators can use this information to determine the devices that are being used to educate students and which are collecting dust. “There is a lot of money that supports technology in K-12 education – let’s make sure it isn’t wasted,” Floyd said. The goal is to provide actionable information to school technical administrators to help make better purchasing and training decisions. The demonstration device device uses Smartenit hardware to provide device measurement and interfacing with proprietary CalPlug analytic engine to determine and track device usage. Actionable summary information is provided via a web interface.
CalPlug graduate researcher, Umar Kazmi, and CalPlug undergraduate researchers Mark Arca and Juan Contreras talk about their project, “Projector Buddy” with Scott Kitcher, president and CEO of CleanTech OC. Projector Buddy is a smart energy saving device that helps lower the power consumption of these projectors by intelligently determining their use and switching them into lower power modes of operation when possible.
CalPlug is located at CALIT2 and was established in 2011 to improve energy efficiency in the use and design of appliances and consumer electronic devices. The CalPlug workshop is a biannual event. To learn more about Calplug visit, calplug.org