Posts tagged RASEI
CU team receives $9.2 million DOE grant to engineer E. coli into biofuels
Dec 4th
A team led by the University of Colorado Boulder has been awarded $9.2 million over five years from the U.S. Department of Energy to research modifying E. coli to produce biofuels such as gasoline.
“This is a fantastic opportunity to take what we have worked on for the past decade to the next level,” said team leader Ryan Gill, a fellow of CU-Boulder’s Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute, or RASEI. “In this project, we will develop technologies that are orders of magnitude beyond where we are currently.”
The team is working with a non-pathogenic strain of E. coli. Among the microbe’s more than 4,000 genes, the team is searching for a small set and how it can be manipulated in a combination of on and off states to change the bacteria’s behavior.
“E. coli is not going to want to make your biofuel at all,” said Gill, who’s also a CU-Boulder associate professor of chemical and biological engineering. “It doesn’t do that naturally. It’s programmed with thousands of genes controlling how it replicates. We’re figuring out what control structure we need to rewire in the bug to make it do what we want, not what it wants.”
Included in the team are Rob Knight, CU-Boulder associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry; Pin-Ching Maness, principal scientist at DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory, or NREL; and Adam Arkin, physical biosciences director at DOE’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The researchers hope to engineer the production of ethylene and isobutanol in the modified E. coli. The two compounds are widely used commodities that can be converted into gasoline among other chemicals.
The greatest challenge is harnessing an efficient and inexpensive process that competes with abundant and low-cost fossil fuels like oil, according to Gill.
“Microorganisms and their genomes are incredibly complex machines,” said Gill. “The first step alone — of pinpointing the part of the E. coli genome that can help us make biofuels or other chemicals on a cost-competitive basis — is a daunting challenge. Then we have to determine if the results we want will take one year or decades, $5 million or $500 million.”
The team will be able to simultaneously identify numerous E. coli genes and the results of turning these genes on or off using advanced technologies. Many of the technologies have been developed by the researchers’ own labs.
The grant is the first of its kind from the DOE’s Office of Biological and Environmental Research and was awarded to only seven other research groups including teams led by MIT, Purdue University and the J. Craig Venter Institute.
In 2011, CU’s Technology Transfer Office named Gill an inventor of the year. In 2005, Gill won a National Science Foundation CAREER Award as well as a National Institutes of Health K25 Career Development Award for genomics research and teaching.
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CU study: PIH vehicle drivers ho-hum about electricity costs
Oct 16th
Households manage plug-in hybrids without
help from online tools, says CU-led study
help from online tools, says CU-led study
Households with plug-in hybrid vehicles, or PHVs, and smart meters actively managed how, when and where they charged their cars based on electricity rates but rarely took advantage of online feedback, a University of Colorado Boulder study found.
CU-Boulder’s Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute, or RASEI, today presented findings from the two-year study — one of the only of its kind, combining both household and vehicle data in a smart-grid context.
“Although households had access to online feedback on electricity use, we were surprised that most were not interested in using it to control their vehicle charging,” said Barbara Farhar, principal investigator and senior research associate at RASEI. “However, households still actively managed their charging in other ways.”
The study was sponsored by Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. Inc. with the integral partnership of Xcel Energy.
A total of 142 smart-metered households were randomly selected to participate from among early volunteers for Boulder’s SmartGridCity project. Toyota loaned 28 Prius Plug-in Hybrid demonstration program vehicles to the study and Xcel Energy installed smart plugs in the garages of study households. Each household used the car for one nine-week period.
Households had access to two websites. One served as a nearly instantaneous meter of vehicle electricity consumption when the car was plugged in. The other website gave delayed feedback on overall household electricity use. Approximately 90 percent of the households looked at the websites only a few times or less. Some never looked at the websites.
Households created distinct methods of managing their vehicle charging based on personal preferences, pricing and convenience.
Initially, approximately half the households were randomly assigned to an “unmanaged” scenario, allowing PHV charging through their in-home smart plug at any time of day. The other half were randomly assigned to a “managed” scenario, which meant their smart plugs were initially programmed to charge only from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. daily.
Households were shown how to change their charging scenarios from “managed” to “unmanaged” or vice versa and were free to alter the scenarios in any way they wanted. Approximately half of the households had standard and the other half had time-of-use electricity rates.
Most of those with standard electricity rates preferred the “unmanaged” scenario, and most of those with time-of-use rates preferred the “managed” scenario, many using a “set it and forget it” approach. Quite a few found the time constraints of the “managed” scenario inconvenient.
“Electricity pricing appeared to drive charging behavior and time cost or convenience was also very important,” said Farhar. “People loved not having to go to the gas station.”
Other findings of the study included a high level of satisfaction among households with the car, but a low level of satisfaction with its electric-only range, about 14 miles of cruising from a full charge, which took three hours in a regular 110-volt outlet.
The PHVs averaged 68 mpg on gasoline and were used for an average of 3.2 trips per day. Altogether, the cars used 27 megawatt-hours of electricity. It was less expensive to drive on electricity as a fuel than gasoline, even when paying higher on-peak electricity rates, according to an Xcel Energy analysis.
Some households charged at locations other than home. Using data from the vehicles, study investigators are continuing to look into where and when away-from-home charging took place.
The two-year study also allowed Toyota to test the PHVs in the Colorado environment including high altitudes, temperature extremes and mountainous terrain.
“The RASEI study demonstrates the importance of testing new technologies with real customers in everyday circumstances,” said Bill Reinert, Toyota advanced technology vehicle national manager. “The results are often unexpected but help us understand the needs of potential customers and how to successfully introduce advanced technologies to the market.”
Dragan Maksimovic, CU-Boulder professor of electrical, computer and energy engineering, was the study’s co-principal investigator. Alison Peters, managing director of the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at CU-Boulder’s Leeds School of Business, was the senior manager.
RASEI is a joint venture with the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory. For more information visit http://rasei.colorado.edu/.
CU smart grid study gets more PHVs to play with
Feb 21st
CU and NREL get 10 more Toyota
hybrids to plug into smart grid study
hybrids to plug into smart grid study
Ten plug-in hybrid vehicles, or PHVs, have been added to a University of Colorado Boulder study that has been examining user experiences and system interactions since September 2010 in the local smart-grid environment.
The increase will allow researchers from CU-Boulder’s Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute, or RASEI — a joint venture with the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory — to gather data from a broader base of participants. The loan of Prius cars from Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. Inc. will expand the originally supplied fleet to a total of 28.
“RASEI’S expertise in analyzing trends in consumer use of energy gives us an opportunity for research at this critical nexus of the electric utility and transportation industries as they transition to the future,” said Michael Knotek, RASEI director. “We are delighted that this project is valuable to Toyota.”
The Boulder location presents the opportunity for study participants to track their household electricity use through smart-grid technology, and for researchers to monitor the performance of Toyota’s first-generation lithium-ion drive battery at high altitudes, in cold weather and in mountainous terrain.
The cars are circulated in nine-week intervals among randomly selected households. Participants receive a “smart plug” — a device installed in home garages — from Xcel Energy that allows online monitoring of their car’s electricity use and their home’s energy consumption. There also are numerous dashboard displays in the PHVs that show gas mileage when driving in electric mode and hybrid mode.
The PHV demonstration vehicles can be fully charged in approximately three hours using a standard 110-volt electrical outlet and can cruise in electric-only mode for about 14 miles. For longer distances, the PHVs revert to hybrid mode and operate like regular Prius cars.
“One of RASEI’s goals is to establish public-private partnerships that bring together academic, industry and government lab research,” said Knotek. “The PHV study, supported by Toyota with the integral participation of Xcel Energy, is the first of many RASEI projects that reflects this type of comprehensive and valuable collaboration.”
The study’s principal investigator is Barbara Farhar, RASEI’s senior research associate. The co-principal investigator is Dragan Maksimovic, CU-Boulder professor of electrical, computer and energy engineering.
