The Smart Grid Energy Research Center or SMERC consists of several key key projects as follows:
UCLA WINSmartGrid™ The UCLA WINSmartGrid™ is a network platform technology that allows electricity operated appliances such as plug-in automobile, washer, dryer, or, air conditioner to be wirelessly monitored, connected and controlled via a Smart Wireless hub.
Automated Demand-Response (ADR) The Automated Demand-Response (ADR) technology research program aims to showcase different levels and modalities of automation in load curtailment, control models and secure messaging schemes, leveraging multiple communication technologies and maintaining interoperability between the Smart Grid automation architecture layers.
Electric Vehicle Integration into the Grid California constitutes a significant automotive market - a place where demanding and energy-conscious consumers come together with creative designers from Hollywood, resulting in an environment rich in ideas on automotive innovation.
Battery and Storage Integration and Aggregation The Battery Storage Integration and Aggregation program aims to integrate energy storage systems into micro-grids to effectively improve power quality, reliability, stability, and economic viability, while increasing the utilization of clean energy. The synergistic outcome of combining these two technologies can promote the creation of a modern, clean, and resilient power grid.
Renewable Integration Today's power grids are constantly facing reliable problems especially when unexpected periods of interruption occur. In recent years, the micro-grid has been proposed as a complimentary solution to help mitigate the reliability issues.
Microgrid Technologies The micro-grid, as part of the smart grid realization, consists of renewable generation, energy storage units and demand management through a low-voltage distribution network. At SMERC, a micro-grid platform based on WINSmartGrid™ and WINSmartEV™ is being developed to control and communicate with smart devices in the micro-grid using various standards. Research being conducted based on the micro-grid platform include solar power generation forecasting, smart lighting control, and load control algorithms.
HAN (Home Area Networks) in Customer Premises SEP 1.0 and 2.0 infrastructures are being integrated into WiFI for the creation of a HAN environment in UCLA which carries demand regulation and energy efficiency signals to the loads within customer premises to achieve demand-based, price-based or transactive load control.
Interoperability of Architecture, Application, Data, Communications, and Security