Students and visitors in the ECEB lobby have learned about energy efficiency through the Student Sustainability Committee-funded touch-screen energy display since Engineering Open House 2021. Two kiosks present ways to reduce energy use and encourage visitors to commit to one or more of these. In return, their names are entered into a random drawing to receive a solar phone charger. Names are selected for Earth Day in April and Energy Efficiency Day in October.
On the wall behind the kiosks a large touch screen displays a dashboard showing ECEB’s energy use and production in real time, energy efficiencies incorporated into the building design, and drone pictures of the ECEB solar array. A poster above the screen celebrates ECEB achieving net-zero energy.
Jim Liao, the 2023 Energy Efficiency Day winner, reported he has taken classes in ECEB, including ECE 484 Principles of Safe Autonomy and ECE 470 Introduction to Robotics in ECEB. He said, “As a newcomer ECE graduate student, I just toured the ECEB building and found the kiosks and the TV screen describing how the building saves energy, then I took a look at the description and filled out the questionnaire.” He added that he was “stunned to learn all the details and actions on the design and functions of ECEB after finding the kiosks and the TV screen describing how the building saves energy.” He also discovered the motion sensors when working in the labs: “I … found out that if I stayed and did not move my whole body in front of the computer too long, the light and the air conditioner would switch off. To continue working, I would have to wave my hands to make the system detect that there are some people in the area.” Jim said he was surprised to see that ECEB has “solar panels on the third floor facing south to capture the sunlight and generate power for the building. In addition, the louvered metal canopy outside of the building could block the hot sunlight in the summer but allow the sunlight in the winter. I am quite impressed with the design of the building, and hope there will be more green buildings over the world in the future.” He also liked watching the ECEB aerial video. “It is really spectacular that there are many solar panels covering the roof of the building. Additionally, we can also see the large screen displaying the energy that the solar panels generate on the dashboard. I am really impressed with the ECEB working for saving energy. Really Interesting!”
Jim reported he saves energy by switching off the light when he leaves an area, mostly at home, and takes public transportation or walks for commuting. In his home country, Taiwan, he works at gardening, planting trees and flowers in an open area and in his personal garden.
Photo courtesy of Todd Sweet, ECE Director of Constituent Engagement
Electric planes that could fly cleaner and transport hundreds of people thousands of miles depend on more powerful batteries and motors than those used in today’s electric cars. Although shorter-range electric planes and electric air taxies, including electric vertical-takeoff-and-landing (EVTOL) that carry a few people short distances nearby (from downtown to the airport) could be commercially available by next year (2025), the dream goal is to electrify large planes that take off and land like regular jet-fueled airplanes. Professor Kiruba Haran said, “To fly an airplane you need two big things: power to propel them forward and energy to keep them flying for a long duration.” Energy is centered on batteries and fuel cells. Batteries for EVOLS and electric planes require higher density than those used in electric cars, because it takes so much energy to get them off the ground. This involves addressing battery weight and heat tolerance. To that end, Halle Cheeseman, a program director for the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) announced that 12 teams will receive a total of $15 million to try to develop batteries and energy storage systems with about four times as much energy density as current technologies, with the goal of electrifying a plane that could convey up to 100 people for 1,000 miles. Illinois-based battery materials startup Natrion, co-founded by CEO Alex Kosyakov, along with NASA, and others are developing solid-state faster-charging batteries that can tolerate much higher temperatures. Propulsion is the focus of Professor Haran and others, including Toshiba and Airbus. They are building superconducting motors that can generate megawatts of power using superconducting materials, which have “no resistance, minimal heat loss and can carry more current, meaning less material — and less weight.” Kiruba remarked, “Superconducting materials hold the promise of being ‘very efficient, very lightweight, power dense.’” However, they must be cooled to exceedingly low temperatures. A possible solution is to use “the energy generated from vaporizing liquid hydrogen into fuel to cool the superconductor.” Another is hybrid turboelectric planes with gas turbines to drive electric motors. Kiruba noted, “For the last 50 years, people have been making electric machines ‘incrementally better.’ Now they have a ‘clean sheet’ for designing ‘a really efficient propulsion system … We’re trying to reinvent the electric machine.’”
This article is extracted from a Grainger College of Engineering Electical & Computer Engineering News item written by Alison Snyder and Joann Muller from “Axios” in the February 24, 2024 issue of Science https://www.axios.com/science
Professor Arijit Banerjee’s group has been researching a wind-energy harvest architecture suitable for offshore wind turbines, which has been funded by the Department of Energy since 2018. They used a 400 W benchtop setup to prove the concept and demonstrated it at a 125 kW power level at the POETS Research and Development Center (see below and youtube link to check out the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8I6LOAICPvY&t=1s). Scaling up the power by more than 300x brought many practical challenges and surprises, including a moment when the generator was on fire and an episode similar to an “aircrash investigation.” ProfessorBanerjee shared the group’s journey and discussed the architecture, along with results from the high-power testbed. This item is based on Arijit’s notes as well as an abstract he submitted for the lecture on November 2, 2023.
Dr. Ulaş C. Coşkun began work in September as CEME’s new research engineer. Dr. Coskun oversees the CEME facilities and the power and energy systems areas on the 4th floor of ECEB and ensures the equipment is in optimal condition for faculty and student use. He primarily supports faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students in experimental research by training them in instrumentation and equipment. Dr. Coskun graduated from Illinois with a Ph.D. in Physics in 2005. He then held postdocs at the University of California, the University of Texas, and Duke University, before joining ISS, a microcopy company, as a research engineer. At ISS, he focused on developing microscopy setups for research groups all over the globe. During his tenure, he developed hardware, software, and electronics to enable commercially available confocal microscopes to do FLIM, PLIM, FCS, and nSPIRO experiments. Dr. Coşkun published two Science and various PRL articles during his academic career in condensed matter, specifically focusing on proximity-induced superconductivity in graphene and carbon nanotubes and how the magnetic field affects the electrical properties of such systems. At ISS, he designed a variable pinhole, the fifth in the world design, which improves user experiences on ISS confocal systems, and an electronic circuit which lets MaiTai lasers be usable in PLIM experiments. His software is still actively used in the physics department, where he earned his degree. With over a decade of experience in experimental research and a strong background in physics, Dr. Coşkun brings a wealth of knowledge to his role as the CEME research engineer.
ECE Professor Domínguez-García and Research Professor in the Coordinated Science Laboratory and the Information Trust Institute, has received dual honors. He became the Inaugural M. Stanley Helm Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering as of August 2023, to be invested on March 25, 2024, was recognized by IEEE for his contributions to distributed control and uncertainty analysis of electrical energy systems, and elevated to IEEE Fellow on January 1, 2023. This prestigious honor is reserved for IEEE members with extraordinary technical accomplishment in an IEEE field of interest. Domínguez-García’s research focuses on providing a reliable and efficient energy supply in our changing world with an electricity infrastructure being transformed and driven by the integration of new technologies and renewable energy sources. In his research on uncertainty analysis, Alejandro’s team develops mathematical frameworks to quantify the impact of random events on power system reliability. Renewable energy systems are a good example: uncertainty analysis can help predict how variations in solar and wind power will affect your energy system. Another example is transmission line failures, which can jeopardize system operational reliability. Professor M. Stanley Helm’s (1911-2003) affiliation and dedication to the power engineering program at Illinois spanned more than 70 years. After earning his bachelor’s (1933) and master’s (1934) degrees in electrical engineering at Illinois, he worked for Illinois Power and Midstate Electric Company, and then at Clemson University and Illinois, fulfilling his calling to teaching. For the next six decades, Helm inspired several generations of electrical engineering students. He co-authored a textbook, Circuit Analysis by Laboratory Methods and received the professional degree in electrical engineering in 1950. At a time when other universities were abandoning their power engineering programs in the 1960s and ’70s, Helm played a key role in preserving the Illinois Program. As a researcher, Helm made significant contributions to the field now known as power quality. Although he retired in 1982, he continued to make valuable contributions to the Electrical & Computer Alumni Association Advisory Board where he served for 15 years. This article was excerpted from a Grainger College of Engineering 8/7/2023 news article by Eleanor Wyllie, from Alejandro’s home page, and from a plaque honoring M. Stanley Helm.
Kiruba Sivasubramaniam Haran – professor of electrical & computer engineering and director, CENTER FOR POWER OPTIMIZATION OF ELECTRO-THERMAL SYSTEMS (P/O/E/T/S),
Professor Haran joined 24 other active NAE members in the Grainger Engineering faculty. These include CEME Power faculty members Professor Emeritus Phil Krein and, before him, the late Professor Emeritus Pete Sauer. NAE memberships are among the highest honors an engineer in the U.S. can receive. Kiruba studies high specific power cryogenic and non-cryogenic machines for electrified transportation and renewable energy applications. Since 2022, he has served as director of the National Science Foundation Engineering Center for Power Optimization of Electro-Thermal Systems – a key enabler in providing an increase in power density through advanced technology and workforce development. He also is affiliated with the Carle Illinois College of Medicine at Illinois. His research has contributed to advanced high-power-density electrical machinery and high-temperature, superconducting technology applications. His group works closely with industry to insert new machine and drive technologies into actual products, and is collaborating with aerospace, renewable energy, and other companies on a range of applications. In partnership with NASA, Haran’s group recently demonstrated a 1-megawatt electric motor that could help propel future, more environmentally friendly and economically sustainable aircraft. Under ARPA-E support, they are now working on cryogen-free superconducting machines through a university spin-off, Hinetics, LLC, with the goal of making unprecedented improvements in efficiency. This news item was excerpted from https://ece.illinois.edu/newsroom/64246 by Lois Yoksoulian and Grainger Engineering staff.
On January 5, 2023, the Electrical and Computer Engineering Building (ECEB) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign became the university’s first zero energy (ZE) certified facility through innovative facility design and clean energy produced on campus. All the operational energy associated with ECEB is now offset through a combination of on-site solar production and solar renewable energy credits (SRECs), which earned the 238,000 gross square foot facility official Zero Energy Certification (ZE) from the International Living Future Institute (ILFI). The ECE Building produces about 11 percent of its energy through its rooftop array, a 300 kW setup featuring 970 panels. The rest of its consumption is supported through SRECs from Solar Farm 2.0, a 12.32 megawatt (MWdc) utility-scale installation on south campus bordering the Village of Savoy. The IFLI standard for meeting ZE certification includes accounting for all heating, cooling, and other energy a facility uses. Any non-electrical consumption is converted to a kilowatt-hour electricity equivalent to assess the efficiency performance and necessary offset. The certification process required a full year for verification and guarantees for continued zero energy operation into the future. Offsite renewable energy production must also be located within the same regional power grid and linked to building energy usage. Reaching energy conservation and clean energy targets as a part of overall sustainability efforts is fundamental to Illinois’ land-grant university mission. The Illinois Climate Action Plan (iCAP) is the university’s strategic plan to meet the Climate Leadership Commitments, including becoming carbon neutral as soon as possible and building resilience to climate change in the local community. This article was excerpted from https://ece.illinois.edu/newsroom/news/net-zero-certification by Steve Breitwieser.
Peter Sauer, Grainger Chair Emeritus Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, died on December 27, 2022 in Urbana, IL. He was 76. Pete joined the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign as a faculty member in 1977. At UIUC he taught courses and directed research on power systems and electric machines. His main contributions were in the modeling and simulation of power system dynamics with applications to steady-state and transient stability analysis. He authored/co-authored over 200 technical papers and a book with M. A. Pai, Power System Dynamics and Stability, which was published by Prentice-Hall in 1998. He retired from full-time service at the end of 2019. During his tenure at UIUC, Sauer won numerous honors and accolades. In 2020 he received the IEEE Power & Energy Society Lifetime Achievement Award for his exceptional career-long contributions to power systems modeling and dynamic analysis, and for leadership in power engineering education. He received the 2022 IEEE Tesla Award “for contributions to dynamic modeling and simulation of synchronous generators and for leadership in power engineering education.” He was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2003. Sauer was once asked what he loved about engineering. “I love that you get a chance to think big and think small” was part of his response. As an educator and mentor, his favorite quote was “Students are candles to be lighted, not bottles to be filled” (adapted from Plutarch). Pete was so influential in his students’ lives that one former student, Bahman Hoveida, established a named professorship, The Peter Sauer – Bahman Hoveida Distinguished Chair in Electric Power, in his honor.
On January 5, 2023, the Electrical and Computer Engineering Building (ECEB) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign became the university’s first zero energy (ZE) certified facility through innovative facility design and clean energy produced on campus. All the operational energy associated with ECEB is now offset through a combination of on-site solar production and solar renewable energy credits (SRECs), which earned the 238,000 gross square foot facility official Zero Energy Certification (ZE) from the International Living Future Institute (ILFI). The ECE Building produces about 11 percent of its energy through its rooftop array, a 300 kW setup featuring 970 panels. The rest of its consumption is supported through SRECs from Solar Farm 2.0, a 12.32 megawatt (MWdc) utility-scale installation on south campus bordering the Village of Savoy. The IFLI standard for meeting ZE certification includes accounting for all heating, cooling, and other energy a facility uses. Any non-electrical consumption is converted to a kilowatt-hour electricity equivalent to assess the efficiency performance and necessary offset. The certification process required a full year for verification and guarantees for continued zero energy operation into the future. Offsite renewable energy production must also be located within the same regional power grid and linked to building energy usage. Reaching energy conservation and clean energy targets as a part of overall sustainability efforts is fundamental to Illinois’ land-grant university mission. The Illinois Climate Action Plan (iCAP) is the university’s strategic plan to meet the Climate Leadership Commitments, including becoming carbon neutral as soon as possible and building resilience to climate change in the local community. This article was excerpted from https://ece.illinois.edu/newsroom/news/net-zero-certification by Steve Breitwieser.
