Research

The LIINES Research Program is currently concerned with the sustainability and resilience of five classes of intelligent multi-energy engineering systems.

  • Smart Power Grids: As a full energy value chain including power generation, power transmission & distribution and building systems. Electricity currently accounts for 29% of U.S. CO2 emissions.

  • Energy-Water Nexus: Focusing on points of interconnection including power generation, desalination, water pumping and building systems. Electricity currently accounts for 49% of U.S. water withdrawals.

  • Electrified Transportation Systems: Focusing on electric vehicles as a point of interconnection. Transportation currently accounts for 27% of U.S. CO2 emissions.

  • Industrial Energy Management: Automated approaches to energy management industrial production & service delivery. Manufacturing currently accounts for 21% of U.S. CO2 emissions.

  • Interdependent Smart City Infrastructures: This research theme represents a concerted effort to generalize sustainability, resilience, to the emerging need for integrated smart cities. U.S. cities are home to 62.7% of the population but comprise just 3.5% of the land area.

Application Areas - Research Themes

Our laboratory is currently concerned with the sustainability and resilience of five classes of intelligent multi-energy engineering systems.

Smart Power Grids

Smart Power Grids

Traditional power systems have often been built on the basis of an electrical energy value chain which consists of a relatively few centralized and actively control thermal power generation facilities serving a relatively large number of distributed passive electrical loads.

Energy-Water Nexus

Hydrogen-Energy-Water Nexus

Clean energy and water are two essential resources that any society must securely deliver. Their usage raises sustainability issues and questions of nations’ resilience in face of global changes and mega-trends such as population growth, global climate change, and economic growth.

Tesla Charging

Electrified Transportation Systems

In recent years, the electrification of transport has emerged as a trend to support energy efficiency and CO2 emissions reduction targets. Relative to their internal combustion vehicle (ICV) counterparts, electric vehicles (EVs) be they trains or cars, have a greater "well-to-wheel" energy efficiency.

Industrial Energy Management

Industrial & Supply Chain Energy Management

The industrial usage of energy presents unique challenges. Fundamentally, it is contingent upon the products and services it delivers. In the meantime, the trend in recent decades has been towards continually evolving and more competitive marketplaces.

Interdependent Smart City Infrastructures

Smart Cities, Regions & Nations

This research theme represents a concerted effort to generalize sustainability, and resilience across research themes to interdependent smart city infrastructures. We are particularly interested in systems where two or more intelligent engineering systems are integrated together.

Research Motivation

Traditional Management System - Plan - Do - Check - Act

As populations grow and densify, our cities' engineering systems must be increasingly integrated to reliably and efficiently deliver their respective services. Doing so in the context of climate change mitigation and adaptation requires a simultaneous commitment to sustainability and resilience. Traditionally, managers have implemented such complex decisions in manual plan-do-check-act loops that lack the ability to make interconnected, timely, and coordinated decisions.

Enterprise Control

Enterprise Control LIINES

To make timely techno-economic decisions, many successful enterprises use enterprise control to automate a hierarchical structure of control, automation, and IT at multiple time scales.

Heterofunctional Networks

To make interconnected decisions across multiple engineering systems, it is important to not just distinguish network structures but their hetero-functionality as well.

Internet of Things

To make coordinated distributed decisions, many enterprises are moving to produce, connect, and control internet-enabled “things” across all engineering systems.