The Power Couple of the Future: Water and Energy

Smart grid

Cockrell School faculty and students are working with members of Pecan Street Project, a smart grid research and development organization headquartered at the University of Texas. Members of the project include Pecan Street Project Executive Director Brewster McCracken and, (l-r), UT professors Suzanne Barber, Ross Baldick, Arumugam “Ram” Manthiram and Thomas Edgar.

Imagine a power grid that allows residents to monitor their home’s energy use from cell phones and schedule appliances, like a dryer or battery charger for an electric vehicle, to run during times of day when power is in least demand and therefore less expensive.

And what if residents could find out how much water they are using in real-time? Such a system would allow them to better manage water use and to see where water is wasted in their homes.

Engineering faculty and students are working to make this scenario a reality, and their research is leading to more integrated and intelligent uses of water and energy.

Working in collaboration with the City of Austin, Austin Energy utility and private companies, the groups are transforming a 700-acre test-bed of homes and businesses in east Austin into a green community whose smart grid could reinvent the way communities across the U.S. generate, distribute, store and consume energy.

Research on the project, known as the Pecan Street Project, will allow power generation and distribution to react in real-time to consumer demands and the intermittency of solar/wind energy production.

Approximately 150 homes in the project will also be installed with technology to collect data on how and when homes use water. As far as UT researchers know, such data does not yet exist.

The “smart water” research could eventually enable a water utility to remotely read water meters and turn off water connections so that the resource is more intelligently managed, said Joshua Rhodes, an architectural engineering graduate student whose leading water/energy research at UT. That way if a homeowner was away on vacation and a pipe burst, the utility could turn off their water. Rhodes said that real-time water use data will also allow homeowners to find small leaks that they would not notice on an aggregated monthly water bill, but could end up costing tens of thousands in foundation/home repairs, including costly mold damage.

“Water meters are generally buried underground underneath metal panels, and so it’s hard for water users to get real-time information about their usage,” said Michael Webber, Rhodes’s faculty advisor and an assistant professor in the Mechanical Engineering Department. “However, with smart meters, they can get much more information—minute-by-minute if they want it—about water use and its costs.”

Atila Novoselac, an assistant professor in the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering, is developing technology that can determine where energy is used and wasted in a building or home. The computer modeling software works on existing and future structures and allows users to input a range of variables – like different types of lighting and window or roofing material – to see which lead to optimal energy savings and also ensure good indoor air quality.

Because more than 40 percent of energy in the U.S. goes to powering buildings, Novoselac said improving their energy efficiency could go a long way toward reducing carbon emissions.

“They’re the most neglected but the largest contributors,” Novoselac said.

Danny Reible holds the Bettie Margaret Smith Chair in Environmental Health Engineering.

Mukul Sharma holds the W. A. “Tex” Moncrief, Jr. Centennial Chair in Petroleum Engineering.

Benny Freeman holds the Paul D. and Betty Robertson Meek and American Petrofina Foundation Centennial Professorship in Chemical Engineering and the Kenneth A. Kobe Professorship in Chemical Engineering.

Suzanne Barber holds the AT&T Foundation Endowed Professorship in Engineering.

Arumugam Manthiram holds the Joe C. Walter, Jr. Chair in Engineering.

Thomas Edgar holds the George T. and Gladys H. Abell Endowed Chair of Engineering.