Posts tagged CU
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/.
Reports: CU degree as good as gold
Oct 15th
CU-Boulder degree rated highly
nationally for return on investment
nationally for return on investment
When it comes to landing “good paying” jobs and receiving a high return on investment, University of Colorado Boulder graduates are in good shape nationally, according to two recent reports.
CU-Boulder ranked in the top 20 in a recent report released by SmartMoney that rated the return on investment for 50 of the nation’s priciest colleges for out-of-state tuition. CU-Boulder, at No. 19, finished just behind Princeton University and ahead of Harvard University, Cornell University and Yale University in the rankings, which compared starting tuition (class of 2009) to recent and mid-career median salaries of graduates.
CU-Boulder also fared well in PayScale.com’s mid-career salary ranking, coming in at No. 35 out of 452 state schools ranked for return on investment.
“This is good news for our graduates,” said CU-Boulder Provost Russell Moore, the chief academic officer of the Boulder campus. “It is good news for the constituents of the state of Colorado and the parents of students who attend the University of Colorado.”
The median salary for recent CU-Boulder graduates (out of school three years) is $45,000, while the mid-career (out of school 15 years) median salary is $87,100, according to figures compiled by PayScale.com.
“What this shows us is the return on investment for our out-of-state students is very good, but for our in-state students, who receive the same median salary coming out of school, the return is even better because they don’t have to put as much money in up front,” said Lisa Severy, director of CU-Boulder’s Career Services office.
There are several reasons for CU-Boulder graduates excelling in the job market, according to Moore.
“For a large research university, we engage undergraduates in experiential learning,” Moore said. “Our students have significant opportunities to engage in cutting-edge research, creative work and studio activities. We engage them at a higher frequency than most other public research universities, in fact, I would argue, many private research universities.”
The interdisciplinary nature of the curriculum at CU-Boulder also plays a role, according to Severy.
“We have a lot of programs that are multidisciplinary,” Severy said. “Since the world of work is multidisciplinary, this training is especially marketable when you graduate, because our students are used to working with other people outside their specific areas of study.”
While proud of the recent rankings, Moore expects the bar to be even higher in the years to come.
“We think we bring a lot of value to higher education and we are very excited about some of our innovative programs that will move the bar even higher,” Moore said.
Nobel Prize-winner David Wineland praised as mentor to CU-Boulder graduate students
Oct 9th
David J. Wineland, a lecturer in the University of Colorado Boulder physics department who today won the 2012 Nobel Prize in physics, was described as both “brilliant and humble” by one of his former graduate students.
Wineland is a physicist with the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder and internationally recognized for developing the technique of using lasers to cool ions to near absolute zero. His experiments have been used to test theories in quantum physics and may lead to the development of quantum computers. He shared the prize with Serge Haroche of France.
Wineland joined the CU-Boulder physics faculty as a lecturer in 2000 and currently works with four CU-Boulder graduate students pursuing doctorates, said physics department chair Paul Beale.
“It would be difficult to find a more brilliant and humble scientist,” said John Jost, who worked in Wineland’s group for about 10 years as a CU-Boulder doctoral student and postdoctoral researcher. “I feel lucky to have worked in his lab for my Ph.D. regardless of whether or not he won the Nobel Prize. He was always available when we had questions and problems in the lab and usually had some great idea about what to try next. At the same time, he gave us the freedom to figure things out on our own.”
In August, Jost began a Marie Curie fellowship as a postdoctoral researcher in the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Wineland’s first demonstration of laser cooling in 1978 led many other scientists to pursue the laser cooling and trapping of atoms. His research helped make possible the creation of the world’s first Bose-Einstein condensate, for which Carl Wieman of CU and JILA and Eric Cornell of NIST and JILA and CU were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics in 2001. JILA is a joint institute of CU-Boulder and NIST.
Five CU-Boulder faculty members have now won individual Nobel Prizes. The other two winners are Tom Cech in chemistry and John “Jan” Hall in physics.
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