CPS: Medium: LoCal - A Network Architecture for Localized Electrical Energy Reduction, Generation and Sharing
Lead PI:
Randy Katz
Co-Pi:
Abstract
The objective of this research is to understand how pervasive information changes energy production, distribution and use. The design of a more scalable and flexible electric infrastructure, encouraging efficient use, integrating local generation, and managing demand through awareness of energy availability and use over time, is investigated. The approach is to develop a cyber overlay on the energy distribution system in its physical manifestations: machine rooms, buildings, neighborhoods, isolated generation islands and regional grids. A scaled series of experimental energy networks will be constructed, to demonstrate monitoring, negotiation protocols, control algorithms and Intelligent Power Switches integrating information and energy flows in a datacenter, building, renewable energy: farm", and off-grid village. These will be generalized and validated through larger scale simulations. The proposal's intellectual merit is in understanding broadly how information enables energy efficiencies: through intelligent matching of loads to sources, via various levels of aggregation, and by managing how and when energy is delivered to demand, adapted in time and form to available supply. Bi-directional information exchange is integrated everywhere that power is transferred. Broader impacts include training diverse students, such as undergraduates and underrepresented groups, in a new interdisciplinary curriculum in information and energy technologies. Societal impact is achieved by demonstrating dramatic reductions in the carbon footprint of energy and its overall usage, greater penetration of renewables while avoiding additional fossil fuel plants, and shaping a new culture of energy awareness and management. The evolution of Computer Science will be accelerated to meet the challenges of cyber-physical information processing.
Randy Katz

Randy Howard Katz received his undergraduate degree from Cornell University, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. He joined the Berkeley faculty in 1983, where since 1996 he has been the United Microelectronics Corporation Distinguished Professor in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He is a Fellow of the ACM and the IEEE, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2007, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Helsinki. He has published over 250 refereed technical papers, book chapters, and books. His textbook, Contemporary Logic Design, has sold over 100,000 copies in two editions, and has been used at over 200 colleges and universities. He has supervised 49 M.S. theses and 39 Ph.D. dissertations (including one ACM Dissertation Award winner and ten women). His recognitions include thirteeen best paper awards (including one "test of time" paper award and one selected for a 50 year retrospective on IEEE Communicationspublications), three best presentation awards, the Outstanding Alumni Award of the Computer Science Division, the CRA Outstanding Service Award, the Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Award, the CS Division's Diane S. McEntyre Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Air Force Exceptional Civilian Service Decoration, the IEEE Reynolds Johnson Information Storage Award, the ASEE Frederic E. Terman Award, the IEEE James H. Mulligan Jr. Education Medal, the ACM Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award, and the ACM Sigmobile Outstanding Contributor Award. In the late 1980s, with colleagues at Berkeley, he developed Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (RAID), a $15 billion per year industry sector. While on leave for government service in 1993-1994, he established whitehouse.gov and connected the White House to the Internet. His BARWAN Project of the mid-1990s introduced vertical handoffs and efficient transport protocols for mobile wireless networks. His current research interests are the architecture of Internet Datacenters, particularly frameworks for datacenter-scale instrumentation and resource management. With David Culler and Seth Sanders, he has started a new research project on Smart Energy Networks, called LoCal. Prior research interests have included: database management, VLSI CAD, high performance multiprocessor (Snoop cache coherency protocols) and storage (RAID) architectures, transport (Snoop TCP) and mobility protocols spanning heterogeneous wireless networks, and converged data and telephony network and service architectures.

Performance Period: 09/01/2009 - 08/31/2013
Institution: University of California at Berkeley
Sponsor: National Science Foundation
Award Number: 0932209
Project URL