[Isa Ferrall, ERG Graduate Student; Jonathan Lee, ERG Graduate Student; and Jordan Freitas, Assistant Professor at Loyola Marymount University]

Every day, 300,000 people are being connected to electricity through efforts to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 7): “Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all.” For them, new access to electricity comes with a host of new data harvesting by electricity meters, appliances, and payment tracking. Unfortunately, this data is typically collected ad hoc and shared in a bespoke manner or not at all, with concerns about privacy and provenance taking a back seat to increasing electricity service. However, lack of attention to data management practices around SDG 7 is slowing progress and creating potential problems down the line.

Connection to electricity often also means new connections to sensors, data collection, and privacy concerns.
Source: Alex Radelich via Unsplash

Effective practices aren’t only about protecting the privacy of individual end users of electricity. There is potential to create real value through systematic data collection and expanding access to more stakeholders, and improvements require considering the position of each. We recently coauthored a freely available review article in a special issue of the Proceedings of the IEEE on energy access, describing 1) the stakeholders involved in the data ecosystem of SDG 7, 2) the types of data at play and how they are being used (or not used), 3) potential value and risks of sharing these to each stakeholder group, and 4) data management principles to incorporate moving forward. We lay out a framework that we hope can be a foundation for initiatives to engage stakeholders in responsible and effective data sharing.

The key stakeholders we identify are electricity users, micro-utilities (mini-grids and solar-home-system providers), macro-utilities (national or regional), governments, development institutions (e.g. the World Bank, United Nations Development Program, Sustainable Energy for All, or national aid agencies), and researchers. We group the types of data as technical (electricity usage, system and product performance), financial (transaction records and costs of service), or demographic (income, cultural affiliation, etc.).

The risks and values to sharing depend not only on the type of data, but who it is about, who is gaining access to it, and privacy mechanisms that are put in place. In the full paper, we explore these combinations and provide detail about the different possibilities and current practices. Through that exercise, we identified areas for mutually beneficial data sharing, others that require careful navigation of tensions, and those where risks outweigh potential values. We found that a common and open platform for sharing technical data can enable efficiency in a number of areas, such as utilities providing better data access to end users to promote energy literacy and efficient use, and aggregating larger consumption data sets for better demand prediction. We surveyed a group of different stakeholders at a 2018 workshop in Nairobi on Decentralized Energy Solutions for East Africa and the Role of Research, and some of the responses illustrated areas with more tension:

• Micro- and macro-utilities sharing performance and cost data can increase competition leading to better quality service with fair pricing for users, but current market leaders may lose their competitive advantage
• Government and development institutions will have better reporting capabilities, but contradictions between promises and performance may be revealed
• Researchers can discover key insights and contribute to public education, but may risk using data that was improperly collected or poorly-documented

Our analysis suggests that fewer benefits are likely to be realized from sharing detailed – even anonymous – financial data of users without increased legal protections. Codesign of data sharing practices and platforms among all stakeholders is crucial to expanding access, realizing benefits, and mitigating risks. These discussions also need to be held in the context of changing regulatory landscapes and utility business models, so that data sharing practices can enable forward-looking goals and are not overly restricted by the needs of today.

We are actively continuing this work with a series of in-depth stakeholder interviews to contribute more primary data about perceptions. Please email Isa Ferrall, Jonathan Lee, and/or Jordan Freitas for more information on how to get involved or to participate in interviews.

This article was originally posted on the blog of the Thematic Research Network on Data and Statistics (TReNDS) - an initiative of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) that leverages the data revolution to support the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals.

[Sara Mulhauser, Director (BERC) Berkeley Cleantech University Prize, ERG graduate student]

Prior to ERG, I developed installation sites for distributed power generation products on behalf of a clean tech start-up. It was there that I came to appreciate the complexity of the energy industry, and understand that we will need to learn how to commercialize innovative technologies within such highly regulated environments if we want to tackle global climate change.

Research and development in the electric power industry is notoriously underfunded -- pharmaceuticals, information technology, and semiconductor firms spend between 15% and 20% of revenues on R&D, whereas electric firms spend less than 0.25% of revenue on R&D – but there is no guarantee of impact even after a scientific or technological breakthrough. There is still the matter of commercialization. A lot of functioning, important technologies die either in the pre-commercial gap (never find venture funding) or in the valley of death.

Berkeley Haas Business School’s Cleantech to Market (C2M) class provides free consulting to clean technology firms to help them through this journey from R&D to commercialization. Its goals are to prevent promising ideas from dying in the pre-commercial gap, and to train an interdisciplinary group of students to evaluate and pitch these technologies – valuable skills for their lives after graduate school.

Technology Commercialization Process - from C2M information slides.

So how does C2M work?

The class is only offered in the fall, but preparations for it start early in the year. The C2M directors spend the first few months of each year vetting technology groups (mostly early-stage companies, sometimes not-yet-companies) for an appropriate fit. In the spring, they start the application process with the students. Many of the students that apply are Haas MBAs, but they strongly encourage students from other disciplines like engineering, hard science, and policy to apply.

C2M first selects “team leads” from the pool of Haas MBA students. These team leads then select team members from the pool of class applicants. It is part NFL rookie draft, part medical residency program matching. You rank which technologies you are interested in working on. Team leads review your resume and statement and determine what kinds of skills they’ll need on their project. The selection process takes place over the summer.

My C2M Experience

Last year, I was matched into a team of four MBAs and one chemistry PhD to support a company developing a new kind of heat exchanger. Heat exchangers are critical pieces within a lot of technologies that we take for granted every day, so even incremental improvements to their efficiency can yield tremendous GHG emissions reductions.

The Rocky Mountain Institute and others have joined a coalition and set out a global challenge to improve efficiency of cooling options, the Global Cooling Prize.

Once the fall semester started, we got to work very quickly. We first learned as much as we could about heat exchangers, both technically, and where they fit into various markets. Then we questioned our client’s assumptions about their pathway to commercialization. We brainstormed every possible use of heat exchangers, what performance metrics were most important to them, and systematically evaluated how our technology’s innovation added value to that industry. We came up with multiple criteria for evaluation, then used that to narrow our search of potential fits.

C2M team brainstorming markets and metrics with which to evaluate markets.

Heat exchanger market evaluation

Once we arrived at a handful of highest potential industries and applications, we set about the hard work of understanding these industries in great depth and quantifying the value add. We learned how to use techonomic models to do this, but we also learned a lot from directly interviewing dozens of industry professionals. This was an incredibly chaotic time with lots of information flowing in. Our six team members divided and conquered the monumental tasks, and somehow magically arrived at the end with great information and strong ideas about how our client might find success. Since the heat exchanger company had a good strategy for approaching their first market (US window air conditioning), we focused on their second and third markets, which they would also need. We ended up suggesting emerging market air conditioning and small-scale data center cooling, because both are underserved by current products on the market and have tremendous growth potential.

I pulled from my training in the dual ERG/MPP degree program during this process. I used back-of-the-envelope calculations and other skills from ER102 and ER200 to parse technical information. I applied skills from the policy curriculum to understand regulatory and policy drivers of markets.
I learned a lot from my teammates; it was an incredibly collaborative environment. Team leads get an additional unit in the course, because they must also dedicate time to steering the ship and learning how to be effective managers of high-output teams. They get a crash course in some of the best professional performance and management coaching, and I was incredibly impressed with how quickly they put it to effective use. I’d easily trade my team lead (who is many years my junior) for any number of bosses I’ve had in professional settings.

At the end of the semester, we produced a lengthy and professional market assessment report, and gave a twenty minute pitch in a formal setting to industry professionals at the C2M Symposium. Symposium attendees often go on to become funders of the technologies, and, as such, they ask very difficult questions after presentations. We practiced for weeks to refine our presentation, including the graphics, the speaking performance, our answers to anticipated questions. We ran it so many times, each of us knew our five minute pieces as well as any politician knows their stump speech. And our research was so comprehensive, we knew we could answer almost any question (we also practiced another important political/professional skill – how to pivot when you don’t know, or like, the real answer!).

C2M Presentation

Welcome to my TED talk on small-scale data center cooling.

We tied with another team for the Game Changer Award, for the technology with the most potential for global impact. We were especially proud of this award, because our competitors had some amazing technologies and presentations, and, well, it can be challenging to make heat exchangers exciting.

We tie for the crowd-voted "Game Changer". My husband attended and did not vote for my team, but I’m not bitter about that.

Why do C2M?

In the end, this was one of the most time-intensive courses I’ve taken in my graduate program, but also one of the most personally and professional rewarding. C2M gets great reviews, and justifiably brags about them. As someone who has been out in the commercial space for many years, I can attest that the skills you learn in the class are the ones required in the field. This is a phenomenal way to practice them, and you will end up creating some great industry relationships. I also got a better understanding of what it takes to go from early- to late-stage start-up, and learned so many interesting things about the other technologies my classmates were serving along the way.

This is a major commitment, but if you think you may benefit by having something like this under your belt, I highly recommend considering applying for the 2019 C2M. This is one important way for people with our kinds of skills to help make much-needed technology a reality, and you get so much out of it in the process.

We only had to wear suits once.

C2M is holding an information session on Tuesday, April 2nd, 12:30 - 1:30pm at Haas N470. 

[Michelle Levinson, ERG graduate student]

Photo credit: natsihlaneone on Flickr

In the aftermath of another round of divisive elections in the United States (and around the globe) many of us feel distraught about the ability and speed of our political systems to address urgent social challenges. Political change requires organizing and community- slow but necessary processes. Meanwhile, from climate change to income inequality, gentrification and displacement to the gender-wage gap, the challenges we face as a society seem more acute than ever. Votes may have been cast and ballots counted, but that does not mean we must wait another two years for our next chance to shape our world. There are other avenues by which we can continue to make change.

Last week I attended the SRI Conference in Colorado Springs as one of twelve conference scholars, where I got to see how investors perceive of their role in mobilizing finance for energy decarbonization and how they are integrating climate change risk into investment decisions. I met people that have spent decades working to spread awareness and develop the tools to leverage the power of investments to achieve better outcomes for society: individual retirement advisors, endowments for religious orders, the City of Chicago, the Sierra Club Foundation -- Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) is being practiced throughout the investment industry.

The principle is straightforward: when we own a piece of a company, be it via public markets, as debt, or as private equity, we are reducing that company’s cost of capital. In a way, we are betting that a company’s business model, practices, and products will contribute to a better, more prosperous world in the future.

This is what I call voting with your investment dollars, and this vote takes place every month of every year. Directly or indirectly, through our educational institutions, pension and retirement funds, and government treasuries, we are all investors in the global economy. But where do we direct this capital? To whom do we entrust it to be used well, and to build a foundation for our long-term personal and communal well-being? We are stakeholders in the economic system, but many of us do not wield this power with as much purpose as we could. 

I work with many people that strive to make such changes in the energy sector, where the financial factors that hinder the development of sustainable energy are perhaps just as daunting as the scientific, technical, and political barriers. Development in both the fossil-fuel and clean energy sectors is shaped by the market appetite for risks associated with investing in new projects, be they a new coal plant or an array of solar panels, which translate into the cost of capital for that project. These equations only account, however, for the internalized risks and costs that project investors are assuming. These may not be the same as the costs faced by society as a whole; they may not account for externalities. When determining our “required return,” investors have the opportunity to thoughtfully consider which risks they are willing to bear and what future they hope to facilitate with their capital for society at-large.

Why is Socially Responsible Investing hard?

Basic microeconomic principles show us that there are plenty of instances where corporate profit maximization can be misaligned with socially optimal outcomes, especially when those internalized benefits create externalized costs. In these cases, a rational business decision or practice that we are facilitating through our investments might run counter to our own long-term priorities and needs. There are lots of reasons why externalities are often not accounted for, such as measurement challenges, information asymmetry, and principal-agent issues. A classic example of private profit running counter to society’s values is the tobacco industry, where much of the healthcare costs that result from tobacco externalities are borne by society as a whole. This tension motivated famed moves by government agencies, such as CalPERS that manages health and retirement for California employees, to divest from tobacco. Even though this meant foregoing short-term profits, the long-term payoff was clear in the eyes of former California Treasurer Phil Angelides: “What sense does it make for CalPERS to be an investor in companies that cost the state billions of dollars?”

Avoiding negative externalities is a start, but investors are increasingly aiming to finance positive impacts. At this conference, Chicago City Treasurer Kurt Summers shared that his office sees its investment dollars as a way to “make a positive impact on some of the most fundamental challenges facing Chicagoans.” Considering environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors helps his office promote conservation and sustainability, racial and gender equity, better labor standards and more, all of which improve the quality of life for both the current and future Chicago community. I am especially pleased to see that the Treasurer’s Office is setting concrete goals for itself, such as achieving a carbon neutral investment portfolio by 2020. The city recognizes that as a first-mover it is a catalyst for change and is using this position to test new approaches and move new efforts forward.

Investment plan from a presentation by the Chicago City Treasurer

Under this banner of impact there were a number of innovative approaches to mobilizing finance for energy decarbonization and sustainable development on display at the conference. I chatted with folks from the Iroquois Valley Farmland REIT, who are making investments in organic farmland, and with clean energy project developers from Clean USA Power; both companies are applying financial products in new ways to move finance towards positive impact. I also enjoyed learning more about my favorite startup, Hyphae Partners, which works to bring finance to businesses that practice regenerative agriculture.

By definition, these negative externalities and positive impacts are not captured in traditional financial information. However, the finance industry is awakening to the notion that non-financial information can be material to a company’s economic performance. This is illustrated by the groundbreaking work of Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) and the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), which are setting standards for corporate sustainability disclosures across industries and asset classes. Better sustainability information allows investors to employ more precise strategies when they invest in their values. SRI strategies were developed decades ago and have been continuously refined over the years, evidenced by the fact that this year’s conference was the 29th reunion of these industry practitioners.

SRI 2018 Conference Scholarship Winners

This year’s 29th SRI Conference provided attendees with a rich snapshot of a dynamic, multifaceted industry. This snapshot illuminated the industry’s shift from niche to mainstream, a growth in asset types and sectors represented, and a welcome intentionality around diversity of representation and perspectives. These trends ensure that this conference will continue to be a fascinating window into a the finance industry and bell-weather for its future. To read more about what you can do to align your personal finances with a future you want to live in, check out Nick Depsky’s great Life@ERG posts on Personal Banking and Retirement Accounts + Mutual Funds.

[Peter Fox-Penner, Director, Institute for Sustainable Energy, and Professor of Practice, Questrom School of Business, Boston University; Jennifer Hatch, Research Fellow at the Institute for Sustainable Energy, Boston University; Will Gorman, ERG Graduate Student, and Researcher at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory]

A cleaner future with autonomous vehicles is not a sure thing. AP Photo/Jae C. Hong

The world is on the cusp of dramatic changes in the ways people own, operate and power their means of transportation.

Known as the “three revolutions,” a term coined by UC Davis transportation professor Daniel Sperling, the new trends are: electric vehicles, autonomous vehicles and sharing-oriented business models (think Uber and Lyft). Optimistically, these revolutions could make our cities a dreamscape of walkable urbanism that will reduce accidents to near zero and make more space for bikes, trees, pedestrians and small businesses while emitting no carbon emissions.

However, because these new technologies aim to dramatically reduce transportation costs, many people are concerned that more people will use autos to get around and the future will be filled with worse traffic and congestion. That could mean that consumption of fossil fuels will increase – bad outcomes for society’s sustainability goals.

We’ve analyzed a whole body of literature on autonomous vehicles and found that autonomous vehicles in particular will likely greatly increase overall transportation demand: With more options available, more people will take advantage of these autonomous vehicles and ride services. Whether there is a net increase or decrease in pollution from higher energy consumption, however, is less obvious.

The key factors affecting carbon emissions from these emerging transportation trends are whether vehicles are electric or use conventional internal combustion engine technology, and how quickly the electric grid can “decarbonize,” or generate power with no net carbon emissions.

Powering autos with the electric grid

Since 2016, transportation has been the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. As our electricity mix becomes less carbon-intensive and transportation demand grows, transportation will make up an increasing proportion of our carbon emissions if the U.S. continues to depend upon a system fueled by internal combustion engines and gasoline.

But how does our country realistically plan for a system that both meets the energy demands of our future transportation system and reduces our carbon emissions?

Our recent paper aimed to answer these questions. Our goal was first to incorporate the big but often overlooked trends in transportation to forecast how much transportation demand will grow. Second, we sought to create reasonable estimates for what is required to enable a clean, renewable and dependable electricity system in the years to come.

We reviewed both academic and industry research regarding future personal vehicle sales, energy efficiency improvements and total vehicle miles traveled as more people use autonomous vehicles.

These charts show the impact on emissions from a rapid shift to a less-polluting grid (left) or a more gradual transition based on government forecasts. In both cases, the key to lower emissions is whether light duty vehicles shift to electric and how clean the power grid is. Peter Fox-Penner, Will Gorman, Jennifer Hatch

This research allowed us to build a model that projects the number of electric and autonomous vehicles that could be on U.S. roads in the future and their related energy and emissions.

Our study estimates that by 2050 the net increase in electricity demand from converting the light duty vehicle fleet to electric, autonomous vehicles will be between 13 percent and 26 percent more than today’s total electricity demand. In the best case, where 95 percent of the electric sector decarbonizes by that time, this scenario would result in a reduction in greenhouse gas emissions of up to 80 percent from 2015 light duty vehicle greenhouse gas emissions.

Drilling down

A few interesting implications follow from of our greenhouse gas emission results. The first is that the rise in ride-hailing services and autonomy – assuming it is 100 percent electric – doesn’t drive significant increases in carbon emissions.

In our “stress case,” we assumed dramatic increases in vehicle miles traveled (VMT) due to autonomous vehicles, slow improvements in vehicle energy efficiency and limited transportation redesign. In this scenario, there was virtually no difference in greenhouse gas emissions compared to other cases with more conscientious policy planning, including VMT taxes, increased public transportation and other measures.

With more autonomous cars and ride-hailing services, more people are likely to use them, leading to potentially more combustion and pollution.  AP Photo/Jared Wickerham

This counterintuitive outcome might make a little more sense by diving into the results. In comparing different scenarios, we found that emissions are more than twice as high in a “low EV” scenario of 50 percent EVs in the fleet by 2050, compared to a “high EV” scenario of 86 percent EVs in the fleet by 2050.

This reflects how much more the shift in electric vehicles affects transportation pollution relative to other major trends in transportation. Even if there are more miles driven from autonomous vehicles, if they are electric and the grid becomes increasingly cleaner, then emissions won’t rise dramatically compared to the country’s current course.

Another takeaway that follows from this result is that society can only achieve dramatic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by making the electric grid dramatically less polluting.

Optimistic scenario

Our study describes what is possible by 2050, and more or less what we believe we need to do in order to ensure the shift to autonomous vehicles and widespread ride-hailing services doesn’t lead to big spikes in pollution.

Of course, transitioning the grid to 95 percent to 100 percent clean energy won’t be easy; currently only 37 percent is from wind, solar, hydropower and nuclear. Nor will ensuring that almost all of our light duty vehicles are electric. That’s partly because EVs are not yet cost-competitive with internal combustion engine vehicles. Also, there are a number of infrastructure challenges to updating the grid for a major shift to electric transportation.

A massive conversion to electric vehicles and low-emissions power generation are needed to slow and lower rising pollution from transportation.  Portland General Electric, CC BY-ND

The good news for utilities is that the increase in electricity demand from electric vehicles will provide a positive, but not overwhelming amount of growth for electric utilities – growth that is welcome given the stagnant or declining revenues for electric utilities the last decade. This should come as a welcome opportunity and could create a strong ally as EV ownership grows.

Though our results represent time frames far out into the future, the policies that will lead us there are being written today. Our study suggests that in the near term, rapid and complete transport electrification and a carbon-free grid should remain the cornerstones of transport decarbonization policy. However, long-term policy should also aim to ensure AVs are electric and mitigate autonomous vehicles’ potential to increase driving mileage, urban and suburban sprawl, and traffic congestion.

And policymakers should not delay. The rise of Uber and Lyft have already dramatically upended business models that have existed for decades, and autonomous vehicle technology, which still has a few years to go before replacing human drivers, is already impacting cities around the country. The question now is whether these trends will reduce or increase our country’s emissions.

This article was originally posted on The Conversation.

[Kelly Jiang, undergraduate researcher at the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Lab]

金盆村 (Jinpen village) is a spectacularly beautiful place in the lush forested hills of Western China, with freshly paved mountain roads winding through steep terraced fields. The fields are filled with all types of crops – ranging from rice and corn, to radishes, greens, cucumbers, tomatoes, sunflowers, lotus, and even crayfish.

Golden hour from a random spot on the road. The single lane concrete road pictured here goes into the fields and was probably paved very recently (in the last 1-2 years) as the Chinese government is working very hard and putting a lot of money into trying to eliminate absolute poverty by 2020.

Jinpen village is partway up the mountain, and provides spectacular views into the valley several hundred meters below. It’s incredibly remote – the drive to the nearest county seat, Nanjiang, takes about two hours on winding mountain roads – and Nanjiang itself is a four-and-a-half hour drive from Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province. Despite its remoteness, the Chinese government has spent a pretty significant amount of money on building up the village. Twenty or so new houses were constructed a couple years ago in an effort to encourage people to move from the fields into the village center. The houses are extremely large: the one we lived in during our stay had four bedrooms and two full bathrooms, and some houses are even bigger.

However, many of the houses are uninhabited – most people prefer to live in their ancestral homes in their fields, since there’s not much for them to do in the village center anyway. There’s one road that goes through the town, an elementary school, a carpentry shop, a police station, two convenience stores, and… that’s about it. So, although it may appear that the area became more “developed” as the town doubled in size with the construction of these new houses, that appearance of development means nothing if there are no economic activities to partake in.

The owners of the house we stayed in don’t actually live in the house, which is why we were able to live there – like many others, they prefer to be close to their fields where they’ve grown up and subsisted off the fruits of their own labor for decades.

The Project

I was in Jinpen as part of the IEEE Smart Village project, which “integrates sustainable electricity, education, and entrepreneurial solutions to empower off-grid communities.” In places where many communities are incredibly poor and lack even basic electricity, installing renewable energy systems in off-grid areas can have a huge impact on those communities’ quality of life. However, merely providing electricity is not necessarily sufficient to achieve economic development benefits – electricity must be but one part of a holistic sustainable development program. Power for All finds that “[m]any factors are critical to establishing PUE [productive uses of electricity] beyond just energy access itself, including capacity development, business permitting processes, access to finance and transportation infrastructure.” [Source] That’s why the smart village project aims to combine energy access with education and entrepreneurship, so that electricity can be an enabler of different types of economic activities such as internet cafes, barber shops, food processing, and much more that would not have been possible without electricity.

For the IEEE smart village project in Jinpen, a 16.2 kW grid-connected solar system was installed on the rooftop of the school. The solar system sells the power it generates to the power grid, allowing the school to save money on electricity and possibly even use the solar energy as an extra source of income. Any extra money is valuable to the school, which is quite cash strapped and has difficulty retaining its teachers due to its remote location.

The population of Jinpen elementary school keeps shrinking as more and more people move from rural areas to urban areas. The graduating 6th grade class this year had 14 students, down from 20 a few years earlier. There are 7 students in 5th grade, and 5 students in 4th grade – 4 next year, after one of the students moves away. There are 84 total students in the school. And Jinpen elementary school is actually one of the larger elementary schools in the area – another elementary school a couple miles down the road has only 5 students. Yes, FIVE students. Across all grades.

The mass migration of people from rural areas to urban cities is happening all around the world, not just in China. It’s happening in the United States, where small towns have been shrinking for decades. Schools in rural America are shrinking and closing, too. So that begs the question: Is this urbanization trend irreversible and just something that we should accept? If so, does it even make sense to be investing so much money in rural areas’ development if people are all leaving? If not, then what kind of economic activities can be developed in these rural areas? These are difficult questions, and we need to be thinking about them a lot more than we are.

~~~

Anyway, back to the project that we were working on – the 16.2 kW solar system installed on top of the school. Funding to build the system was donated by a variety of individuals and organizations, including Sichuan University, various renewable energy companies, etc. The total cost of the system was about US$25,000, or ¥150,000. It was wonderful to see so many people from the public, private, and nonprofit sectors all come together to support the project – it’s been a really long process to raise all the funds and coordinate all the parties who contributed to the construction of the system, and it’s a testament to the generosity and capabilities of the project organizers, especially Xiaofeng Zhang, that this project was able to become a reality.

Since the system is grid-connected, it’s essentially just selling the solar energy it generates to the grid – at a higher price than it costs to buy energy from the grid. Thus, the school is selling (expensive) solar energy to the grid, while buying (cheap) electricity from the grid, resulting in savings.

One of the paths to a family’s home. Yes, this is actually the trail. If you look closely you can kind of see it. That family had electricity.

Since the school is already connected to the electricity grid, as are all of the homes in the area (even the ones that are only accessible by hiking for 1km or more on dirt paths that can be incredibly steep and get super muddy in the rain), putting solar on the school doesn’t really provide a meaningful benefit when it comes to electricity access. It’s worth emphasizing what an incredible accomplishment it is that China has been able to provide electricity access to every household in the country – that’s a huge infrastructure project, and China is probably the only country at this point that could do something on that scale.

(Aside: grid extension is probably not the most cost-effective way of electrifying rural areas, as building out transmission and distribution lines for so many hundreds of miles to carry relatively small amounts of electricity is really, really expensive. A single rural grid connection in Tanzania can cost US$2,300, compared to an off-grid solar system that costs US$240. [Source: Power for All] Thus, in many unelectrified villages, it is far more cost-effective to install solar home systems or microgrids, rather than extend the central grid. Hence, the IEEE smart village project aims to bring solar home systems, irrigation pumps, and microgrids to unelectrified villages, rather than using grid connection.)

Anyway, since the benefit of this system doesn’t come primarily from the fact that it’s providing energy access, it’s all the more important to ensure that the educational benefit to the students is maximized – that the students really understand how solar energy and other forms of renewable energy work, why renewable energy is important, etc. Ideally, the solar panels would also be integrated into the school curriculum on a regular basis.

As part of the focus on education in this program, the solar system was designed specifically to show students some of the different considerations when designing a solar energy system. There were three different kinds of trackers installed on different panels – some were connected to a flat single-axis tracker, others were connected to a tilted single-axis tracker, and others were connected to a tracker that students can adjust to tilt more or less towards the south as the seasons change. There were also, of course, fixed panels tilted towards the south that weren’t attached to trackers. The idea behind this is for students to see firsthand how solar energy is affected by the angle of solar panels throughout the year. Additionally, the students should have a sense of responsibility and ownership of the solar panels that they adjust every two weeks to keep up with the changing angle of the sun.

On the rooftop with the students and solar panels!

Another potential benefit of having solar installed on the school is that it could continue to provide power to the school during power outages. Most unfortunately, the solar system didn’t actually have islanding capability (i.e. the capability to separate itself from the grid during an outage), which pretty much negates the most obvious use case of the solar system for the school. However, if they get a bit more money in the next few years, they can implement the hardware needed for the school to island itself from the grid. That said though, it would have been ideal for the system to be completely designed and built upfront so that the school could have access to all the benefits of the solar system from day one.

But that’s a lesson learned that can be applied to the next smart village project! They’re actually planning to expand the smart village program to 200 schools within the next five years (a “Five Year Plan”), so there are lots of opportunities to improve on the system design for future projects.

It’s also important to keep in mind that sustainable development projects must be maintained over the long term. It’s all too common to do projects like this, put on a show to announce that the project has completed, then walk away without thinking about the long-term impact. Especially as the IEEE smart village program aims to expand to 200 schools in the next five years, I really hope that there’s an emphasis on ensuring that these projects are focused on making the greatest impact in the villages where they are installed. Quality over quantity.

In my discussions about rural development with my advisor at Chongqing University, he commented that many development projects in China are completed to the extent that officials will be able to point to their work and say that they hit whatever target the Five Year Plan had set in place. For instance, China has a target of eliminating absolute poverty by 2020, and the Chinese government is throwing huge amounts of money at this target so that they can say, when 2020 rolls around, that this target has been met. However, the real key, my advisor said, is to see the status of rural development in 2025, in 2030, in 2050. After the attention fades away, have the local communities developed new types of economic activities that can be sustained? Or does the government need to keep spending billions on these communities to keep them afloat while the rest of the world moves on?

Read the rest of this post on Kelly's personal blog, The Procraftination.

[Laney Siegner, ERG graduate student]

The Case for Living Tiny
For years now, the Tiny House movement has been a Big Deal. It’s captured the imaginations of residential homeowners, city planners, international development agencies, homeless and affordable housing advocates, and the renewable energy/sustainable living community. It sparked the interest of a group of Energy and Resources Group (ERG) students back in 2014 when the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) announced the first-ever Tiny House Competition, soliciting applications from colleges and universities in California to design and build off-grid tiny houses for any specified end-use. This group, THIMBY 1, worked for two years to fundraise, research, design, and construct the first UC Berkeley tiny house, which won top awards at the SMUD competition for Water Conservation, Sustainability, Craftsmanship, and Home Life. Other teams in the competition included Laney College (which has a well-respected carpentry training program), Santa Clara University, and several Cal State campuses.

In the intervening years, the Laney College team has gone on to build several additional tiny houses to address the affordable housing crisis for the City of Oakland. A Berkeley project in the works from Youth Spirit Artworks (YSA) proposes to build a Tiny House Village for homeless youth, with onsite resident advisors, social workers and jobs training, but is seeking Berkeley city government support with siting and permitting. The initial budget proposal to Berkeley City Council attaches an article published in the Richmond Confidential about THIMBY during the project planning phases, addressing the issue of tiny house legality and homeless housing. It remains unclear if such villages can take advantage of emergency housing policies, or if the residential period of intended users qualifies them for “traditional” residential permits and zoning. Despite lack of legal clarity, tiny houses for homeless and affordable housing are gaining momentum as a promising strategy favored by alliances of city governments, non-profits, and city planning researchers forming to address the housing crisis pummeling regions such as the San Francisco Bay Area. The ease and speed of assembly (especially when modular) combined with low cost and community-building benefits of tiny house villages make them an attractive alternative to larger apartment or condo complexes. Onsite energy generation and composting toilets, where permissible, further decrease the strain on existing city infrastructure.

Inside THIMBY 1
The design of THIMBY 1, built around the SMUD Tiny House Competition requirements, does not make this particular unit well suited for homeless housing. The combination of new energy technologies and off-grid water systems have required a fair bit of experimentation, energy expertise, and physical labor from the residents above and beyond what average housing residents would consider desirable. The cost of the energy systems alone would make this too expensive to build for scalable homeless housing. The tiny, sustainable, affordable housing challenge is something that the THIMBY 2 project will take on as part of its mission, as I discuss below.

I’ve had the good fortune of living in THIMBY 1 for the past several months. It’s been a series of up-and-down hurdles and learning experiences— perhaps ideal for a graduate student researcher passionate about experimenting with sustainable-living behavior changes, but a few kinks remain to be worked out in order to garner widespread appeal. The maintenance alone is significant even in such a small living space. This owes in part to the suite of innovative technologies integrated in the house, for which there is not yet a well-developed pipeline of customer support. The hours we’ve spent on the phone with SolarEdge and Tesla trying to get the inverter and battery to communicate to each other and function in both off-grid and on-grid settings, or tinkering with the Sanden CO2 heat pump to prevent it from thermo-siphoning could constitute several Master’s-level theses.

Our team continues to expand and evolve around tiny-house-related research. We’re developing a prototype of a Home Energy Management Systems (HEMS) that will optimize solar generation, battery state of charge (SOC), and certain controllable loads to keep the house comfortable while using energy at optimal times (determined from weather forecasts and battery SOC). This new offshoot project, EMPOWER (Energy Management Producing Opportunities for Widespread Emissions Reduction), aims to launch a commercial product that will integrate with solar home systems and provide grid services by taking advantage of dynamic pricing and times of peak solar generation to use that energy directly for flexible loads within the home. The product is intended to save money for both electricity customers and utilities, and be affordable to low-income households.

Living in THIMBY 1 allows me to participate in both the renewable energy and data science worlds. From piloting off-grid technologies and lifestyle, to gathering data every 5 minutes on energy consumption and generation, we really are residents of a “living lab.” Tapping into the latest social media hashtag #reviewforscience, we joke about the common objects we’ve repurposed in the house for off-grid systems. Look out for a review on Hamilton Beach slow cookers that reads: “great for heating poop to the right temperature to deactivate pathogens after 30 minutes for safe composting. #ReviewforScience.”


Moving Forward with THIMBY 2

The THIMBY 1 pilot has generated a valuable set of lessons learned and experience with new technologies that will be useful in future implementations, whether on- or off-grid. Meanwhile, a whole new team of graduate and undergraduate students is forging ahead on the second iteration of the THIMBY project. From initial meetings and email blasts to departments soliciting student interest, almost 100 students replied, enough to form several side-by-side teams of student tiny house designers.  THIMBY 2 is partnered with the City of Richmond and Richmond BUILD to design and construct tiny houses to serve transitional homeless housing needs. Richmond BUILD is a construction training organization that works with minority populations and formerly incarcerated individuals to provide job training and placement in carpentry, contracting, and renewable energy positions. They will provide the building space and expertise for UC Berkeley students working alongside trainees on the design and construction elements. The Richmond Housing and Community Development department will provide connection to transitional housing groups that will also contribute to the design specifications, ultimate siting location and selection of residents for the future tiny house(s).

Partnerships like this are extremely promising examples of universities, city governments, and social organizations coming together to tackle pressing economic, social, and environmental challenges. Solving affordable housing dilemmas in a way that reduces residential energy footprints, advances the building energy transition needed to reverse climate change, and provides social and economic services to residents achieves a triple bottom line of social, economic and environmental benefit. While every location-specific context requires different considerations in terms of affordability and sustainability of tiny house construction, the sky’s the limit to the number of viable applications for tiny housing. From addressing homeless housing in Richmond to building for international contexts in Nairobi, students from the UC Berkeley/RAEL THIMBY team are thinking big about tiny living.

If you are interested in getting involved with the THIMBY 2 or future THIMBY projects, contact Shane Wright (shanebwright@berkeley.edu) and Laney Siegner (asiegner@berkeley.edu). 

[Peter Worley, ERG graduate student]

Many of us at ERG wonder why there continues to be electricity waste and resource waste, despite available solutions. You can hear the aghast complaints around the lunch table: "Why don't people set back their thermostats?!", or "Why don't restaurants compost?!"

Design Thinking (or Design Innovation) is a helpful framework to assess the possible barriers to the solution. It inspects whether the solution is desirable, feasible, and viable. Failed 'solutions' often lack one of these attributes. It gets a different name when it is applied to different domains. When creating physical products, it is called Product Design; developing services - Service Design, presenting information - Visual Design, and shaping organizations - Enterprise Design.

Source: Capterra

This framework can also be helpful for tasks in graduate school less formidable than global sustainability, like applying for a grant, shaping a student organization, or teaching a class. We apply a type of Design Thinking when writing an NSF proposal. We apply Visual Design to tailor our essays for the end-user: the tired, overworked reviewer traveling on airplane.

But what is Design Thinking? Let's break this buzzword down. Design Thinking is an over-arching method for innovating or problem solving. The idea is to simultaneously consider an idea's desirability, feasibility, and viability. Desirability is the human desire for the solution because of its aesthetics, functionality, or ergonomics. Feasibility is that the idea is possible with current technology and regulations. Viability is that the solution can be implemented economically.  The focus on all three distinguishes this strategy from other approaches like 'technical solutions' or 'continuous improvement', which focus on just feasibility or miss desirability.

I've found that Design Thinking leads to more effective and elegant solutions. I first witnessed it when I took a capstone course in Product Design, manufacturing a bee hive monitoring device that was proposed to Shark Tank's initial screening. (Spoiler alert, we didn't get on the show.) I further saw Design Thinking's benefits during consulting when I helped create a custom rebate program for a utility and helping launch a website and digital tools for an energy efficiency start up.

Now, a primer on the actual methodology. I like to put it into three steps:

1. Problem Framing  
2. Divergent Thinking  
3. Convergent Thinking

We'll use programmable thermostats as an example of how to use each step. It seems that until recent smart thermostats, even the most conscientious and skilled of us would rather keep our house heated constantly at 80 degrees than dare interface with that mean robot box that seemed to taunt any attempt at a change in temperature schedule.  

Problem Framing: 

First, the designer or problem solver must frame the problem that is to be solved. There are three sub-steps to framing the problem.

Identify and Empathize with End User 

The first and most fundamental step is identifying who the end-user is that has a need for a problem to be solved and putting yourself in her shoes. Hint, it is usually a human (though there is plenty of product design for cats). This is where you'll hear the term "Human Centered Design." This is the distinction that Design Thinking puts the problem in the frame of reference of the human end-user not in the frame of reference of the designer, the engineer, or the piece of technology.  

*Heads-Up* The end-user is not always the customer (e.g. kid's toys, dentist device) 

In our case, the end-user is the everyday inhabitant, Gertrude. She is not a dedicated environmentalist and not a computer coder. To empathize you think about the long days she has at work or the frustrating spontaneous errand days and the last thing she wants is for her house to be cold just to save a couple bucks on energy. Setting a thermostat schedule is so low on the chore list. 

Define the Problem

This is also known as "The Need." This is a very difficult step. It is the classic of identifying the disease not the symptom. In our case it is rather simple, Gertrude wants a comfortable house whenever she is home and to save energy when she is not, even with a capricious schedule.  

Establish Constraints

These are often broken down into the technological, the economical, the ergonomical, and the cultural. What is physically possible with current technology? We don't have technology yet that can read our minds and determine exactly when the temperature is too low or too high. What are the cost or lead time thresholds for the product? Most people aren't willing to spend $1,000 on a thermostat. What human physical limitations must we work within? It must be comfortable (physically or cognitively) to adjust temperature settings. And finally, what taboos or traditions should we be cognizant of? Design should probably avoid a fire-engine red to fit into the typical interior design of a house. 

*Heads Up* It seems counter-intuitive, but often we are more innovative when we are forced to work within constraints.

Divergent Thinking: create choices. 

This is where the classic brainstorming comes in. No thought showers. Serious, heavy brain storming.

*Heads Up* This step is ripe for a common mistake: shooting down brainstorm ideas. 

This is not the time for critique. We need to generate as many ideas as possible. Weird ones, too. Out-there ideas bring in aspects or relationship we wouldn't have otherwise imagined. The 'quality idea' at the end is a function of the quantity of ideas earlier.

When teammate Randy suggests the thermostat that should be a big lever that comes out of the wall with a stress ball at the end, hold back the giggle or sigh and write it down. On to the next idea. Randy's idea might inspire others to consider other ideas that only have one interface point.

Source: Astrid Baumgardner

Convergent Thinking: make choices.  

This is where you start paring down ideas.

You can use mind maps, decision matrices, and prototypes. The key here is to fail early and often. This is where you'll hear the term "rapid prototyping." *Heads Up* A common mistake is to invest too much into a prototype. First prototypes should look stupid - cardboard, pipe cleaners… childish. Often people pour too much time and resources into a prototype, which detracts from materializing other ideas. This makes the creator personally invested in that single prototype, often making them more defensive and less willing to consider other options.

Maybe to appease Randy you take a dowel rod and stuff a stress ball on the end and hold it next to the wall and show how this really won't fit well behind a couch or below a family painting.
In the end, if executed well, the Design Thinking process can lead to elegant and effective products like the new smart thermostats we see that can be adjusted by a smart phone app or have few minimal physical buttons to get confused over.

If you want to learn more about Design Thinking, the umbrella group on campus for Design Thinking is the Jacobs Institute. You can find info on student groups, classes, seminars, and tools there.  Another main resource is the D School at Stanford where much of Design Thinking originated from. You might even apply Design Thinking to your life! (Yep, you can take a class at Berkeley on it. Some ERGies are doing it this semester.)


Additional images from iMindMap and Alam and Shakil (2014).