News from SinBerBEST

SVInsight Article: Nelumbo

Huang, Judy — Thu, 19 Apr 2018 23:56:00 +0000

SVInsight recently covered Nelumbo, the hydrophobic/ ice-phobic coatings company that was founded by SinBerBEST researchers led by Prof. Hayden Taylor, in Chinese. The article discussed how the company uses chemical engineering techniques to improve heat transfer research, advance current refrigeration technology, and impact the refrigeration, air conditioning, central heating, and electrical car industries.

Lance Brockway and Liam Berryman, Nelumbo's co-founders, met at UC Berkeley while working on BEARS research funded by the government of Singapore. Along with 23 other scientists, they studied the commercialization of sustainable, clean energy. During this study, Lance and Liam realized that material science can solve refrigeration issues. They decided to setup a company to solve heat conduction issue using material science, resulting in Droplet(R)EjectTM, a specialized coating and Ice-NTM material. Afterwards, Berkeley Catalyst Fund and Photon Fund invested in Nelumbo.

By using Nelumbo's Ice-NTM material, which contained DropletR EjectTM, a specialized coating, water drops flow over the surface of the material. Microscopically, the DropletR EjectTM functions as a heat transfer mechanism, allowing the water molecules to bounce off the surface continuously. When the water vapor liquefies on the surface of the cold water during the condensation process, minor interference in the air causes these water droplets to leave the surface as they continue to expand and combine.

By keeping the surface dry, Nelumbo's technology drastically decelerates frost formation and freezing processes in fridges. According to Lance, the defrosting mechanism uses 15% to 20% of the total energy consumed by frost-free refrigerators. This means that an average household refrigerator made using Ice-NTM material will defrost 50% less a year.

This novel material can also be applied to the air conditioning, central heating, and electrical car industries as well. For central heating, when the heat pump is made of Nelumbo's Ice-NTM material, the frequency of defrosting is reduced by half. In doing so, Nelumbo helps individuals save money and energy, and aids the environment in not adding to the haze produced by coal heating in Northern China.

Lastly, Ice-NTM materials also enhance electric vehicle operations during cold climates. In cold regions, electrical vehicles’ travel range is reduced as these vehicles will need to allocate its electrical power to defrosting, which slows down the start of these cars, impacts the engine operations, and reduces the performance of these cars despite their existing defrosting capabilities. In fact, according to Tesla Rati’s statistics, a fully-charged Tesla vehicle has 40% fewer travel range during Norway’s winter. Liam pointed out that Ice-NTM material can reduce the frequency of defrosting by half, thereby increasing the starting speed and range of electric vehicles.

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I Want to Live Like This: A Haze Free Sky, and Frost-Free Ground

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Structure Safety Paper: Maintainable and Flexible Building Design

Huang, Judy — Tue, 10 Apr 2018 23:24:00 +0000

The Structural Safety Journal will be publishing research findings from UC Berkeley, Berkeley Education Alliance for Research in Singapore, Chungbuk National University, and Universitat Internacional de Catalunya on using performance-based engineering and multi-criteria decision analysis for designing sustainable and resilient buildings. Please click on the link to download the full article.

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Applied Energy's Special Issue: Energy-cyber-physical Systems

Huang, Judy — Wed, 14 Mar 2018 23:50:00 +0000

Applied Energy, a peer-reviewed, academic journal that focuses on energy engineering research, has a special issue on "Energy-cyber-physical Systems" that will be published in the February 2019 edition. The guest editors for this issue include Prof. Costas Spanos, SBB2 Program Leader. Please click here for details on the Call for Papers. Paper submission for the Energy-cyber-physical Systems edition will start on May 1, 2018.

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Berkeley Engineering Article: Building-in-Briefcase

Huang, Judy — Fri, 27 Oct 2017 00:00:00 +0000

In October 2017, Berkeley Engineering highlighted an easy-to-use, cost-effective, building condition and usage monitoring tool that was developed by SinBerBEST researchers working with Professor Costas Spanos. Kevin Weekly, Ming Jin, and Ruoxi Jia, co-developed this device, the Building-in-Briefcase (BiB) system. Each BiB set can measure the detailed environmental conditions of a sizable residence, a medium-sized office suite, or any other similarly sized space in the built environment. Please click here to view the Berkeley Engineering article.

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Brains for buildings, packaged in a smart briefcase

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IEEE Spectrum Article: What Does Your Smart Meter Know About You

Huang, Judy — Thu, 03 Aug 2017 22:10:00 +0000

In June 2017, IEEE Spectrum published a feature article on how a smart meter provides information in addition to energy consumption data to the power companies. In a recent paper from SinBerBEST researchers, Ming Jin, Ruoxi Jia, and Professor Costas Spanos, they showed that "Machine learning systems can be trained to detect occupancy without any initial information from a home owner." Please click here for the full IEEE article and here for the SinBerBEST paper.

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What Does Your Smart Meter Know About You?

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SinBerBEST Renewal Program Approved by National Research Foundation

Huang, Judy — Wed, 12 Jul 2017 22:09:00 +0000

The SinBerBEST Renewal program (SBB2) has been approved for funding by the National Research Foundation. It commenced on 1 June 2017 and will end on 31 May 2022.

Building on the considerable research investments and successes from the current SinBerBEST program, the SBB2 team will continue to innovate building technologies for energy efficiency and environmental sustainability, with renewed, greater emphases on technology transfer and commercialization, and closer collaboration with the Singapore agencies.

The SBB2 team will also pioneer in major new research directions to continue its leadership in optimal, sustainable, and agile built environment for tropical climates. These new directions are connected by the comprehensive use of data and analytics engines, and by an emphasis on human and behavioral perspective.

Specifically, SBB2 will advance the current state in efficient, sustainable, tropical buildings in two closely interrelated dimensions, Building Energy Efficiency Improvements and Human Centric Design, reducing the global energy footprint, and improving occupant thermal comfort as well as productivity in work settings. Using the Green Mark for Non-Residential Buildings 2015 as a reference, SBB2 aims to introduce innovations that will reduce energy consumption metrics by a factor of two, and will significantly increase the fraction of occupants that are satisfied with the respective built environment.

For more information on the Green Mark for Non-Residential Buildings 2015, please visit bca.gov.sg/GreenMark/others/Green_Mark_NRB_2015_Criteria.pdf.

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Berkeley Engineer Article: Smart Buildings in the Next Generation Infrastructure

Huang, Judy — Tue, 23 May 2017 21:58:00 +0000

In the Spring 2017 issue of the Berkeley Engineer magazine, UC Berkeley Engineering researchers shared their visions about the system of the future. SinBerBEST Program Leader, Prof. Costas Spanos, imagined a world in which a network of intelligent buildings, capable of monitoring their own energy consumption, negotiate with electric power companies to sell off their energy surplus. Please click here for the full article.

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Smart moves: California's next-gen infrastructure

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OSIsoft + SinBerBEST

Huang, Judy — Tue, 09 May 2017 23:55:00 +0000

OSIsoft has been providing data management systems and data visualization services to the SinBerBEST program. It recently featured the research program and its Program Leader, Professor Costas Spanos, in a promotional video. Please click here to view the video.

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Nature.com Paper: Characterization of Photocatalytic Powder

Huang, Judy — Sat, 11 Mar 2017 01:00:00 +0000

Nature.com's Scientific Reports recently published research findings from UC Berkeley, National University of Singapore, and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on the characterization of photocatalytic TiO2 powder under different conditions. They used an advanced XPS with synchrotron radiation light source to explore the surface changes of bulk photocatalytic TiO2 powder under near ambient pressure with the sequential supply and termination of UV irradiation, water moisture, and oxygen.

Please click on the link for the full article.

Research Areas:

Thrust 5: Materials, Designs & Lifecycle

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Characterization of photocatalytic TiO2 powder under varied environments using near ambient pressure

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Berkeley News Article: Using Smart Fans to Save Building Energy

Huang, Judy — Wed, 18 Jan 2017 22:41:00 +0000

UC Berkeley News recently covered research findings from UC Berkeley, Nanyang Technological University, and Stanford University on the impact of personal fans on thermal comfort of building occupants in Singapore. Prof. Stefano Schiavon, a UC Berkeley Assistant Architecture Professor in Sustainability, Energy and Environment, a Researcher with the Center for the Built Environment, and a Principal Investigator of SinBerBEST, discussed the interdisciplinary team's research results about the impact of of the personal electric fans on air conditioning and heating needs of a building.

Please click on this link for the entire article.

Research Areas:

Thrust 4: Human-Building Interactions & the Environment

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Turning up the thermostat in tropics shows promise for energy and comfort

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SinBerBEST PhD Student Wins Best Paper Award

Sturgill, Chase — Wed, 07 Dec 2016 17:01:00 +0000

PhD student Krishnanand Radhakrishnan and Dr. Joymala Moirangthem of NUS received the Best Paper Award at the 2016 IEEE International Conference on Sustainable Energy Technologies for their work titled "GIS Integrated Automation of a Near Real-Time Power-Flow Service for Electrical Grids."

In this paper, they discussed how the future of high renewable energy penetration and its power variability necessitate fast power-flow computations for power management. This management requires minimal human intervention, which is achievable through fast and reliable automations. Holomorphic Embedded Power Flow (HEPF), a Geographic Information System integrated automation of a non-iterative power-flow method, can be used to generate near real-time updates of a power system’s electrical state. These updates are useful for power management.

More information about the conference can be found at http://icset-ieee.org/2016/index.html.

Congratulations.

Research Areas:

Thrust 4: Human-Building Interactions & the Environment

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The Atlantic Feature Article: Why Shoes are the Key to a Comfortable Office Temperature

Huang, Judy — Fri, 30 Sep 2016 23:33:00 +0000

The Atlantic recently featured UC Berkeley research on the impact of foot covering on thermal comfort of building occupants. Prof. Stefano Schiavon, faculty researcher with Center for the Built Environment (CBE) and SinBerBEST, and Prof. Ed Arens, CBE Director, discussed their findings about the impact of footwear on the air conditioning and heating needs of a building. Please click on this link for the entire article.

Research Areas:

Thrust 4: Human-Building Interactions & the Environment

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In Cold Offices, It's All About Your Feet

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SinBerBEST Graduate Students Win Best Paper Award

Sturgill, Chase — Fri, 08 Jul 2016 15:59:00 +0000

NUS graduate student Palak Jain and UC Berkeley graduate student Jason Poon received the Best Paper Award at the 2016 IEEE Workshop on Control and Modeling for Power Electronics (COMPEL) for their work titled 'Fault Diagnosis via PV Panel-Integrated Power Electronics.'

Their work explored an innovative method for improving the reliability and fault tolerance of photovoltaic systems by using smart power electronics. Co-authors of the paper include Professors Sanjib Kumar Panda and Jian-Xin Xu of NUS, and Professors Seth R. Sanders and Costas Spanos of UC Berkeley.

More information about COMPEL can be found at http://sites.ieee.org/compel2016/.

Congratulations.

Research Areas:

Thrust 1: Sensing, Data mining and Modeling

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SinBerBEST PIs Win Green Buildings Innovation Cluster Grant

Huang, Judy — Fri, 24 Jun 2016 17:42:00 +0000

Building and Construction Authority has awarded two SinBerBEST Principal Investigators, Kameshwar Poolla and Su Rong, with a $1M grant for an energy efficiency and human comfort project for two years, starting July 1, 2016. The project entails scheduling and control of air distribution and delivery in building variable air volume air conditioning and mechanical ventilation systems.

It proposes a holistic approach covering system modeling and adaptive model identification, hierarchical distributed scheduling of cooling and ventilation air supply, model predictive control of air handling unit fans and zone dampers, real-time fault diagnosis and prognosis, and hierarchical distributed Information and communications technology infrastructure and sensor technologies.

Congratulations.

Research Areas:

Thrust 2: Multi-Level Optimal Control

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WiFi-based Indoor Positioning System Deployed at UC Berkeley

Huang, Judy — Fri, 03 Jun 2016 20:30:00 +0000

SinBerBEST's WiFi-based Non-intrusive Indoor Positioning System (WinIPS) is a system that automatically detects the presence of all occupants using WiFi-enabled mobile devices, and precisely estimates their locations in real-time.

It provides real-time occupancy distribution information, and enables a better understanding of human activity patterns, and a more precise forecast of a building's energy consumption. Building occupants can also directly check their locations through any browsers on their mobile devices without a lengthy APP installation process.

WinIPS won the 3rd Place award in the IPSN 2014 Microsoft Indoor Localization Competition. With this installation at the BEARS office in UC Berkeley, WinIPS has coverage across 8200 m2 in 11 different indoor environments across the world.

To access the WinIPS information for the BEARS office at UC Berkeley, click here. Then, you can click on ‘Show All Users’ button on the right to check the real-time locations of all occupants (each blue dot represents one occupant.) You can also click on ‘Show Heatmap’ to view the heatmap of occupancy distribution in the past 10 minutes.

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SinBerBEST Job Openings Available on BEARS Website

Huang, Judy — Tue, 24 May 2016 00:06:00 +0000

SinBerBEST and SinBeRISE job openings are available on the BEARS website. To access these job openings, please click here to visit the BEARS website. Then, click on "Jobs" in the navigation tool bar to view the current openings.

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SinBerBEST PI's Research Included in Sembcorp-NUS Corporate Laboratory

Son, Christina — Mon, 02 May 2016 22:17:00 +0000

Sembcorp-National University of Singapore (NUS) Corporate Laboratory has incorporated a SinBerBEST Principal Investigator's, Sanjib Panda's, research on "Predictive Maintenance of Power Plants" at the Jurong Island as an area of emphasis for the lab. This lab is the sixth Corporate Laboratory at NUS supported by the National Research Foundation. It will focus on developing cutting-edge and cost-effective technologies in power generation, industrial wastewater treatment and reuse, as well as waste-to-resource conversion.

Deputy Prime Minister's speech at the lab launch is available for access here.

Research Areas:

Thrust 3: High Confidence Building Operating System

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Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean's Speech at Launch of Sembcorp-NUS Corporate Laboratory

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SinBerBEST PhD Student Selected for Technology and Policy Summer Program

Son, Christina — Mon, 02 May 2016 21:02:00 +0000

Jayantika Soni, a SinBerBEST PhD student at the National University of Singapore (NUS), has been selected to attend the highly competitive Technology and Policy summer program. This program is jointly hosted by the NUS Faculty of Engineering, Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology, Singapore-ETH Centre, MIT Technology and Policy Program, ETH Institute for Science, Technology, and Policy, Singapore University of Technology and Design, and the NUS LKY School of Public Policy. Congratulations to Jayantika.

Research Areas:

Thrust 3: High Confidence Building Operating System

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SinBerBEST Technology Energy Assessment Published

Son, Christina — Thu, 28 Apr 2016 21:28:00 +0000

The Energy Assessment Report details the creation of a whole building energy model to represent a typical large commercial office building in Singapore which meets Green Mark Certified Level version 4.0 energy requirements. This model allows us to look at results related to energy consumption in detail. The main purpose of this whole building energy model is to provide a reference for SinBerBEST researchers to estimate the potential energy savings for a particular technology, and to easily compare to other research results.

Below are the links to access the Assessment report and its supporting presentation.

SinBerBEST Technology Energy Assessment Report

Whole Building Energy Modeling of SinBerBEST Technologies presentation

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Nelumbo Wins Berkeley Cleantech University Prize

Son, Christina — Tue, 29 Mar 2016 23:00:00 +0000

Nelumbo has developed an omniphobic nanocoating which accelerates water shedding and reduces contaminant build-up on surfaces. We are using our OMNIPHOBE™ coating in air conditioning systems to raise efficiency by up to 25%. Our coating is 200X thinner than a human hair, conducts heat, and adds less than 2% to the manufacturing cost of an AC unit, allowing for cost-effective universal application on any scale or geometry. By applying OMNIPHOBE™, we can reduce maintenance costs, decrease energy consumption, and improve air quality for the next generation of air conditioning.

The Berkeley Cleantech University Prize (CUP) Competition was a four month long intensive program for Cleantech start up companies, including mentorship, entrepreneurial training, and access to prototyping spaces at UC Berkeley. The program culminated in a pitch prize for $100,000 and advancement to the national competition in June 2016.

At the annual BERC Energy Summit on February 18th, Nelumbo (Liam Berryman and Lance Brockway) were awarded first place for continuously showing high potential as a team and a strong value proposition for their innovation.

The research that led to the invention of the technology was supported by the Singapore-Berkeley Building Efficiency and Sustainability in the Tropics (SinBerBEST) program, part of the Berkeley Education Alliance for Research in Singapore (BEARS), which is funded by Singapore's National Research Foundation (NRF).

To access the Department of Energy press release, please click here.

Research Areas:

Thrust 2: Multi-Level Optimal Control

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SinBerBEST Annual Symposium

Huang, Judy — Wed, 20 Jan 2016 07:02:00 +0000

SinBerBEST held its Annual Symposium in which its researchers presented program goals and research accomplishments over the past four years, and their vision for the future on the SinBerBEST theme: Building Efficiency and Sustainability in the Tropics. They also heard from local and international experts on topics related to energy and the built environment. Lastly, tours and demonstrations were offered in the Cyber-Physical testbed that was designed to facilitate research on sustainable tropical buildings.

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SinBerBEST Graduate Student Wins Best Poster Award

Son, Christina — Mon, 02 Nov 2015 21:19:00 +0000

Gouqing Geng, a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley, won the Best Student Poster award at the 14th International Congress on the Chemistry of Cement, the most important congress in the cement field. This award was given for his research titled “Multi-technology investigation of the atomic structure of calcium silicate hydrates”.

Research Areas:

Thrust 5: Materials, Designs & Lifecycle

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Lab Tour

Son, Christina — Fri, 09 Oct 2015 21:41:00 +0000

This video provides a high-level overview of the newly completed Laboratory in the CREATE Tower. The length of the video is approximately 10 minutes long.

To view the video, please click on this link.

To download the video, please click on the download button located on the upper right hand corner of the Internet browser, and follow the download instructions.

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SinBerBEST Graduate Student Wins Best Paper Award

Huang, Judy — Wed, 02 Sep 2015 23:28:00 +0000

Min Jin, a graduate student at UC Berkeley, won the Best Paper Award for the paper, Sensing by Proxy: Occupancy Detection Based on Indoor CO2 Concentration at the Ninth International Conference on Mobile Ubiquitous Computing, Systems, Services and Technologies. His co-authors include Nikolaos Bekiaris-Liberis (post-doc), Kevin Weekly (UC Berkeley gradudate student,) and Professors Costas Spanos and Alexandre Bayen. Besides receiving digital awards, they are also invited to submit an extended article to one of the International Academy, Research and Industry Association Journals.

Research Areas:

Thrust 1: Sensing, Data mining and Modeling

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Indoor Navigation System on Google Glass

Huang, Judy — Wed, 05 Aug 2015 07:56:00 +0000

SinBerBEST's indoor positioning and navigation system has been realized on Google Glass recently. Please click on the following link to view the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ4kJu4ivdE

Research Areas:

Thrust 1: Sensing, Data mining and Modeling

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