The Whiting School of Engineering (WSE) and Ralph O’Connor Sustainable Energy Institute (ROSEI) will sponsor the 2024 ARPA-E Innovation Summit, Read more
This is the ROSEI bi-weekly funding digest summarizing external funding opportunities of interest to ROSEI and the JHU community. ROSEI Read more
Supported by a new grant from U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), a Johns Hopkins group is Read more
Researchers from the Ralph O’Connor Sustainable Energy Institute (ROSEI) and Morgan State University are teaming up with the State of Read more
A team of Johns Hopkins researchers affiliated with the Whiting School of Engineering’s Ralph O’Connor Sustainable Energy Institute (ROSEI) is Read more
Click here for more information and to apply to the position. The Electric Power Innovation for a Carbon-free Society (EPICS) Read more

Events

11:00 am
March 25
Title: Energy Intersections with Climate Change Policy, Sustainability and Health Abstract: This presentation covers two distinct and crucial areas of research within the realm of energy planning, sustainability and public health. The first segment of our research delves into the complex challenges of achieving climate goals through long term energy planning. We propose a novel, decision-relevant multi-model approach, focusing on the development of the Mexican electrical grid. This approach utilizes spatially and temporally detailed expansion plans derived from seven top-down Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs), overcoming traditional limitations such as coarse time-steps and a lack of geographic specificity. By comparing these plans, we identify robust areas for investment in generation and transmission infrastructure, thereby offering improved guidance for policymakers in shaping future energy policies to meet long-term climate objectives. Further enhancing our study, we apply various sustainability criteria with the weighted sum method to evaluate the proposed development pathways. This integrated analysis combines pathways from large-scale global models with a detailed electricity model, bringing geographic precision to our multi-criteria sustainability assessment. The second segment of the presentation shifts focus to ongoing work examining the impact of power outages on hospitalizations for various health conditions in North Carolina. By merging several years' worth of data on power outages and health outcomes, we aim to provide a comprehensive analysis of how power outages can affect various physical and mental conditions. Our findings aim to identify vulnerable populations during power outages and offer valuable insights for stakeholders in the energy and healthcare sectors to mitigate these impacts. Together, these studies underscore the critical intersection of energy planning, climate change goals, and health impacts, highlighting the necessity for integrated approaches to address these challenges. Bio: Dr. Rodrigo Mercado Fernández is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering at Tecnológico de Monterrey, Guadalajara Campus. He obtained his Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, with the support of the prestigious Fulbright García-Robles scholarship. His career is marked by a commitment to applied multi-disciplinary research in energy, sustainability, modeling, and equity, aimed at informing decision-making and policy. Notably, his work has been applied to energy systems in Mexico and the US, employing multi-model strategies to identify robust investments and analyze the sustainability and equity of energy portfolios, with the aim to aid decision makers in the development of new energy policies. His publications include “The Sustainability of Decarbonizing the Grid: A Multi-Model Decision Analysis Applied to Mexico” (2022) in Renewable and Sustainable Energy Transition, and “Robust Regional Power Planning to Meet Climate Goals” (2022) in Energy and Climate Change. His latest ongoing work explores the nexus between energy and health, particularly focusing on how power outages affect various health outcomes.
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1:30 pm
March 25
Title: Next-Generation Power Conversion for a Sustainable and Net-Zero Society: From Topology Research to System Integration Abstract: The transition from a fossil fuel-dependent energy system to a net-zero-CO2 all-electric system hinges on extensive expansion of the electric grid infrastructure, along with the widespread deployment of power electronic converters and energy storage systems. Nevertheless, considering a standard 20-year lifespan, converter systems currently being installed will require replacement as early as 2050. With the anticipated magnitude of the future Internet of Energy, the maintenance or replacement activities may eventually confront the depletion of limited raw materials and give rise to significant waste generation, thereby posing substantial environmental challenges. Therefore, next-generation power electronics, on one hand, will strive to deliver larger amounts of power with higher conversion efficiencies, lower functional volume / higher power densities, and extended lifetime while also meeting increasingly stringent power quality requirements. On the other hand, there is an urgent need for the development of sustainable power electronics in order to minimize environmental impact throughout the entire lifecycle, from resource extraction to production, operation, and disposal, as well as to develop effective reuse and recycling strategies to reduce electronic waste. This seminar will first discuss the fundamental importance of power electronics in the decarbonization and/or defossilization of the global energy system, as well as the key factors driving the advancement of modern power electronics. Next, three selected past research topics will be covered: Novel bidirectional EV chargers with a very wide output range of 200V to 1000V; Cryogenic power electronic supply of cryo-cooled high-temperature superconducting (HTS) magnet systems for future circular collider (FCC); Advanced topology and modulation schemes for industrial motor drive systems. This seminar will end by discussing potential research areas in power electronics, including topology research, design methodologies, and system integration, which aims to provide viable solutions and produce tangible results towards a sustainable and net-zero society. Bio: Dr. Daifei Zhang received his B.Sc. degree (2017) in Electrical Engineering and Automation from Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), followed by the M.Sc. (2019 with distinction) and Ph.D. degrees (2023, advised by Prof. Johann Kolar) in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology from ETH Zurich. In 2017, Dr. Zhang was an exchange student for bachelor thesis at the Institute for Power Generation and Storage Systems at RWTH Aachen, Germany. Since July 2023, he is a postdoctoral researcher at PES, ETH Zurich. His research interests include advanced three-phase power electronics inverters and rectifiers, cryogenic power electronics, and design methodology for sustainable power electronics. Dr. Zhang is the recipient of the best paper award in IEEE 22nd Workshop on Control and Modelling of Power Electronics (COMPEL), the outstanding graduates award from HUST, several international conference travelling grants for outstanding student papers.
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5:00 pm / 6:00 pm
March 27
Note: The Richard J. Carroll Memorial Lectureship in Civil Engineering was established at Johns Hopkins University to commemorate one of Baltimore’s leading structural engineers. The lectureship has been endowed by the many friends and admirers of Richard Carroll, who died in 1982. That endowment contributes to the ongoing guest seminars in the Department of Civil and Systems Engineering and provides for these special lectures. The lecture is free and open to the public. RSVP is only required for the cocktail reception after the lecture. Speaker: Craig Schwitter ’89, Senior Partner, Chair of the Global Board, Buro Happold Title: Decarbonization in Buildings and Infrastructure: Accelerating the Energy Transition Ahead of Us Abstract: The destabilizing effects of climate change continue to mount and pressure cities, states, and nations to come to grips with how to transition large-scale economies for a low-carbon future. Buildings and infrastructure occupy a significant portion of the carbon economy through their day-to-day operation, as well as the embodied carbon inherent in new construction. While great strides are being made in decarbonization, the challenge gets larger the more we delay, forcing us to accelerate energy transition. What strategies are working in the built environment? What does a decarbonized building and city infrastructure look like? What are the opportunities ahead to tackle these challenges? Drawing from a portfolio of global building and infrastructure projects, Craig will look at key innovations that are happening today and where these might lead us as we continue to search for the solutions to this generational problem.

Bio: Craig Schwitter is the Senior Partner, Chair of the Global Board, and founder of the first North American Buro Happold office in New York City more than 20 years ago. Focused on creating innovative structures for the built environment, he has led the successful delivery of many iconic projects that have transformed cities throughout the world, including New York City’s High Line.

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1:30 pm
March 28
Title: Reengineering civil infrastructure systems for decarbonization Abstract: Re-engineering civil infrastructure systems requires radical but practical new thought in how we design and operate them. Many societies are poised to make massive, costly, and technically challenging investments to decarbonize and electrify existing infrastructure. Demand management options, exercised on an unprecedented scale, can reduce the level of investment required. These options include storage, smart scheduling, and much greater efficiency and flexibility in energy end use. We do not need to overbuild our energy systems. Instead, automation, distributed sensors, smart modeling, optimization, and software can all be used to provide services with the same quality to humans with less infrastructure and less energy consumption. With my collaborators, I have already implemented some of our ideas in live environments and shown how they can be rapidly scaled. Our city-scale decarbonization experiments with electrified, integrated energy systems explored the diverse roles of thermal storage, demonstrated megawatt-scale flexibility, and generated revenue. We also developed an 85,000 m2 experimentation testbed at Stanford to “stress test” multi-zone commercial buildings and show how modest changes to room temperature settings could be used to avoid multi-million-dollar investments. Bio: I am an Independent Research Consultant at Stanford for TotalEnergies and an Adjunct Professor in the Energy Science & Engineering department. My research approach draws on technical engineering, mathematical modeling, and software engineering. My background has led me to work on solutions across traditional disciplinary barriers, in productive collaborations with engineers, mathematicians, and economists. I create 1) mathematical models of integrated energy systems; 2) computational tools to design and operate them in new ways; and 3) software prototypes to conduct real-world efficiency and flexibility experiments with cyber-physical systems. I wrote my PhD dissertation in Stanford’s Energy Science & Engineering department, advised by Profs. Sally Benson and Peter Glynn. I am also an Ingénieur Polytechnicien from the French Ecole Polytechnique (X2011).
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1:30 pm
March 29
Title: Evaluating hardware and soft technology for rapid energy system decarbonization Abstract: Technology hardware and deployment processes (“soft technology”) seem fundamentally different, but little work examines the nature of this difference and its implications for technology improvement. This talk introduces a conceptual and quantitative model to study the roles of hardware and soft technology in cost evolution and applies this model to solar photovoltaic (PV) systems. Differing properties of hardware and soft technology help explain solar PV’s cost decline, where rapid improvements in hardware affected globally traded components that lowered both hardware and deployment costs (“soft costs”). Improvements in soft technology occurred more slowly, were not shared as readily across locations, and only affected soft costs, ultimately contributing less than previously estimated. As a result, initial differences in soft technology across countries persisted and the share of soft costs rose. Complementing the case of solar PV, insights on cost dynamics in other technologies, including nuclear fission and electrolytic hydrogen production systems, will be used to outline conditions under which hardware and soft technology can enable and hinder cost reductions. More generally, this talk illustrates the usefulness of modeling dependencies between technology costs and features to understand past drivers of cost change and inform future technology development and adoption strategies. Bio: Magdalena Klemun is an assistant professor in the Division of Public Policy at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). She is also affiliated with the HKUST Energy Institute. Magdalena’s research interests are in understanding how the economic and environmental performance of technologies evolves as a function of policy and engineering design choices, with a particular interest in the role of hardware vs. non-hardware innovations. Magdalena received her Ph.D. from the Institute of Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS) at MIT, her M.S. in Earth Resources Engineering from Columbia University, where she studied as a Fulbright Scholar, and her B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Information Technology from Vienna University of Technology.
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Carbon / Grid / Storage / Wind
April 22
After a great turnout in 2023, ROSEI's 2024 Earth Day and Birthday celebration will be hosted in the Glass Pavilion on the Homewood Campus! Check this page at a later date for more information about the event.
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