Christoph Reinhart, Shreshth Nagpal, Carlos Cerezo Davila (since 2017) supported by Exelon Corporation
The role of utilities is to provide reliable, affordable and clean energy to their clients. To meet this expectation, utilities have long focused on the construction and maintenance of an energy supply system that provides energy services to buildings, street lighting and other elements of the built environments, usually with a mindset that demand will steadily grow over time. Given the proliferation of distributed energy resources along with energy efficiency measures implemented at the building level, we seem to be reaching a turning point at which future energy demand is expected to fall and the grid will increasingly assume the role of a brokering and storage system. To be prepared for these changes, utilities would benefit from developing a better understanding of how building energy demand curves are likely going to change over time. This project accordingly proposes to develop technology that facilitates the design of a building energy infrastructure platform (Energy Bazar) for the City of Chicago.