Traditional central heating and cooling systems treat an entire house as if it were one room with one uniform temperature. Furthermore, these systems fail to provide room-specific temperature control, instead heating or cooling the entire home based on the readings of a single temperature sensor in the thermostat. By installing a wirelessly controlled vent cover, equipped with temperature sensor and motorized shutter in each room of a house, the Wallflower Ventilation system provides the ability to control room-specific temperature settings. Each vent will communicate with a central thermostat that controls and monitors the network. The thermostat will also record temperature readings to the homeowner’s online account. By accessing the system’s website, the user can update their desired temperature, change settings from their smartphone or office computer, and track their home’s energy use. With this system, the home’s ventilation network can become part of the Internet of Things, offering real-time monitoring, access to weather forecasts, and the incorporation of advanced analytics.
PT-E generator proposes to build a device that can harness the energy generated by the impact of moving vehicles onto highway and city road surfaces. This energy is then converted into electricity that can be stored in batteries or uploaded into the electric grids to power residential and public facilities. The device uses the same mechanism of an automatic watch to store and release the mechanical energy collected from vehicles. This project may help solve the ever-increasing energy demands while reducing our reliance on fossil fuels and cutting back the amount of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere that cause global warming.
This project seeks to provide a feasible and sustainable solution for growing energy demand in Africa. Its core innovation is in the village-scale solar power system that is currently being prototyped at UC Berkeley. One team member’s extensive contacts in renewable energy organizations in Ghana gives this team a platform and local access to start implementing pilot systems. Ghana’s growth rates for energy need, population, and development approximate Sub-Saharan Africa’s on a whole, and therefore can be used as a suitable benchmark for testing. This team utilizes an array of inexpensive solar panels to provide remote generation. A predictive back-end will provide energy generation forecasts up to three-days ahead, and will convey expected generation shortfalls through SMS to end-users. Electricity sales will be on-demand and sold via mobile credits, expecting to generate USD $50 per month for a 2kw system.
The Berkeley Green Campus program strives to educate students, staff, faculty, and the local community about the importance of energy conservation and achieve substantial energy savings by implementing projects on the main campus and in the residence halls.
Commercially available motors have certain limitations for solar-car-racing applications and focus on delivering higher than necessary top speeds at the cost of sacrificing torque output. The goal of the Rotors in Motion project is to develop a general method for optimizing motor designs and to then use this method to manufacture a motor for the UC Berkeley Solar Vehicle Team CalSol.
The goal of Smart Building is to validate an adaptive, real-time, automated energy management solution, Energy Management System (EMS), through pilots at commercial building sites, starting with restaurants and office buildings. Restaurants have the highest energy intensity of all commercial buildings, and office buildings are the largest energy consumers of all commercial buildings. Estimated annual energy cost savings are over $3,200 for the median restaurant, and $22,000 for a medium-large office, representing ten and twenty percent savings, respectively, on the utility bills for these buildings. Once validation is completed, and feasibility is established, the team plans to commercialize the product, and will seek to scale rapidly through strategic partnerships and licensing.
The main objective of this project is to develop an optimal way to improve energy efficiency on the UC Berkeley campus by converting waste cooking oil to biodiesel and then using this biodiesel to power various campus operations. Biodiesel, a type of diesel that comes from biological sources, is biodegradable, non-toxic and produces 60% less carbon dioxide emissions than petroleum-based diesel. Biodiesel can be produced from waste cooking oil. This project advocates for the productive use of the 5,500 gallons of cooking oil waste on the UC Berkeley campus every year. If UC Berkeley’s dining halls each saved the waste oil that they produce into a drum or a large oil container, the oil could then be used to create biodiesel, which can then be used for sustainable campus operations.
