Planning Grant: Engineering Research Center for Responsive, Efficient, Livable, and Independent Sunlight-enabled Habitats (RELISH)

Suny At Buffalo, Amherst NY

Investigators

Abstract

The Planning Grants for Engineering Research Centers competition was run as a pilot solicitation within the ERC program. Planning grants are not required as part of the full ERC competition, but intended to build capacity among teams to plan for convergent, center-scale engineering research. This planning grant will assemble a diverse multidisciplinary team, develop a comprehensive plan, and lay the groundwork for an NSF Engineering Research Center that designs and implements integrated systems and livable environments for responsive, efficient, and grid-independent local use of sunlight to sustainably meet ever-increasing human needs for energy and light. In other words, it will develop advanced self-sufficient solar-powered residential buildings that incorporate new and emerging technologies in novel ways. In the U.S., buildings account for about 40% of primary energy consumption, and 75% of electricity use. Residential buildings alone account for about 21% of energy consumption. Meanwhile, total residential energy consumption continues to rise despite efficiency gains driven by policy measures (e.g., Energy Star). Breaking through current limitations requires a broader approach to innovation that changes the way buildings generate and consume energy, not only to promote sustainability, but also to increase the resiliency of our energy infrastructure. Energy independence at the building or neighborhood level can protect against both natural and human-caused disruptions of energy supply while enabling greater integration of renewable resources. Thus, the planned Engineering Research Center will serve the national interest by making energy generation and consumption in buildings more sustainable, resilient, and secure. This benefits national prosperity and welfare while helping to secure the national defense by making the US energy infrastructure more robust. These aims will be achieved by advancing and integrating new materials and technologies, and will thus promote the progress of science in a way that directly benefits society. The goal of this NSF Engineering Research Center planning grant is to assemble and integrate a world-class team of engineers, architects, scientists, and policy experts to advance and mature the vision for creating integrated systems and livable environments for responsive, efficient, and grid-independent local use of sunlight to sustainably meet ever-increasing human needs for energy and light. The planning grant will support team-building via professionally facilitated planning workshops with wraparound online activities that build communication and trust across geographic and disciplinary boundaries. Recurring planning meetings will be held throughout the grant period. A major public symposium is proposed to bring together ERC proposal partners, distinguished invited speakers, and students from SUNY at Buffalo (UB), partner institutions, and other institutions, particularly minority-serving institutions. A series of faculty-led half-day workshops will introduce the broader team to foundational values and perspectives of various disciplines represented on the team, furthering mutual understanding and trust across the team. Team leadership will travel to visit both existing successful ERCs and potential industrial partners. The team will engage with existing successful programs in education, outreach, and broadening participation at UB and partner institutions to identify best practices and opportunities for partnership. In all these activities the team will systematically gather ?voice of the customer? input from stakeholders ranging from researchers to companies to K-12 students to designers, builders, and potential occupants of future housing to be developed through the ERC. The team also will engage marketing, communication, and social science researchers to identify and effectively survey potential occupants, aiming to reach a true cross-section of Buffalo?s diverse population. The proposed project will generate new scientific ideas, research directions, and applications thereof that address the gap between available and needed renewable energy. The project will significantly advance fundamental understanding of the informatics-driven development of transformative light (wavelength) converting materials that open new paradigms for harvesting and utilizing solar energy. It will generate ideas for next generation adaptive photovoltaic and thermal/illumination/disinfection systems to realize sustainable energy consumption and internet-of-things-based systems for large-scale adaptive control and optimization of energy flow. It will provide new concepts in residential architecture that lead us to reimagine ways in which buildings are designed, manufactured, and occupied in light of new materials and technologies. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.