Rural communities to benefit from $5.9 million smart electrification project
“Rural areas are home to one-fifth of the US population, cause one-third of US greenhouse gas emissions, and often suffer high levels of poverty and energy burden,” said Kevin Kircher, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, and principal investigator of the project. “As we transition homes to electrified systems, rural communities must not get left behind.”
Kircher has demonstrated several electrification innovations as part of the DC Nanogrid House, a 1920s-era West Lafayette home retrofitted with solar panels, batteries, electric appliances, electric heat pumps, and sensors in every room. At this experimental testbed, Kircher’s team has demonstrated that smarter heating controls can reduce electricity usage by 20% and save homeowners an average of $300 every year. They’ve also shown how older breaker boxes can use smart controls to handle larger electrical loads.
To implement these changes in a rural setting, Kircher is focusing on rural electric co-ops — nonprofit organizations that bring electrical utilities to rural areas. “Co-ops serve two-thirds of rural populations, enjoy high levels of trust from members, and are self-regulated, so they can be more agile than regulated, investor-owned utilities,” Kircher said. “This project will pave the way for electric co-ops nationwide to engage rural communities in grass-roots climate mitigation and adaptation.”
Kircher’s team will work with Tipmont, an electric co-op in west central Indiana, to deploy new technologies into at least 250 buildings, mostly detached single-family homes. They will install electric heat pumps to replace propane, fuel oil, and electric resistance heat, reducing costs and emissions associated with heating and cooling by at least 30%. They will also negotiate bulk discounts on new solar and battery installations. Finally, they will install smart energy management systems to balance the electrical load of both individual homes and power grids.
The $5.9 million project is funded by the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, as part of their Connected Communities initiative. Co-principal investigators of the team include Jie Cai, associate professor of mechanical engineering; Panagiota Karava, professor of civil engineering; Vassilis Kekatos, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering; Xiaonan Lu, associate professor of electrical engineering technology; and Davide Ziviani, associate professor of mechanical engineering.
The team plans to work with several equipment manufacturers such as Carrier, Rheem, and Whirlpool; battery supplier Posh Energy; software providers Emulate Energy and Camus Energy; solar energy supplier Rectify Solar; Area IV community action agency; the Indiana Housing & Community Development Authority; the Indiana Community Action Association; and energy architecture experts at Oak Ridge National Laboratories.
“Working on the latest technologies, while also being able to assist nearby rural communities, is one of the privileges of being here at Purdue,” Kircher said. “It’s our hope that the lessons we learn on this project can be applied and scaled up to rural communities throughout the country.”
Source: Kevin Kircher, kkirche@purdue.edu