Sustainable management of energy to improve quality of life in developing countries

The Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures focuses on advancing sustainability research and connecting it with the policy debate around how humans can live in a more sustainable way.
grantham.sheffield.ac.uk

We are recruiting Scholars who will combine outstanding intellect with a strong commitment to public engagement, leadership and action. These ambitious individuals will complete interdisciplinary PhD research projects to help solve the challenges of sustainability. They will be supported by the Centre through a unique training programme, designed to equip them with the skills to become policy advocates and leaders in sustainability matters.
http://grantham.sheffield.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Grantham-Scholars-training-brochure.pdf

Your application for this studentship should be accompanied by a CV and a 200 word supporting statement. Your statement should outline your aspirations and motivation for studying in the Grantham Centre for Sustainable Futures. You should also outline any relevant experience and interests that you have in sustainability issues.

Please select ’Standard PhD’ and the ’Department of Architecture’ which is where the lead supervisor is based. Fill in the title of your desired project and the name(s) of the supervisors. The starting date of the PhD will be the start of the next academic year - 1 Oct 2018. The ’Funding stage’ on the form will be ’project studentship’.

For academic enquiries, please contact Prof Darren Robinson ([Email Address Removed]).

This interdisciplinary project seeks to develop and test new techniques to better manage the utilisation of scarce electricity in locations that are too remote to be connected to power grids or that are connected to grids that are frequently interrupted. In this our focus is on India, where many households lack basic electrical appliances (e.g. cooling, refrigeration) that many of us take for granted. This will involve extending the functionality of an advanced Multi-Agent Stochastic Simulation platform, that was originally developed to model and simulate building occupants’ energy using behaviours, to also simulate interactions between electrical energy supply, storage and demand devices; employing artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to optimise these interactions to meet Indian homeowners’ objectives (service delivery quality, cost).

This will require a mixed-methods approach, benefitting from supervisory experience in multi agent simulation (Prof. Robinson), social science (Dr. Choudhary) and electrical engineering (Dr. Odavic), and involving travel to India.

The principle of extending our Multi-Agent Stochastic Simulation (MASS) platform to model and simulate electrical devices and Demand Response (DR) strategies has been proven through an initial prototype. But this is currently restricted to just one supply device (photovoltaic panels), one type of demand device (washing machines and dishwashers) and one storage device (a battery) and the minimisation of operational costs.

Through this Scholarship, we plan to extend MASS/DR to: (i) model a comprehensive range of supply, demand and storage devices, (ii) enhance our AI techniques to also optimise responses to local grid conditions (e.g. to avoid overloading cables or substations; or to manage responses to an interrupted supply), (iii) represent how people may respond to cues designed to modify their use of electrical energy services, and how this varies as a function of socioeconomic conditions.

This will require that we have a thorough understanding in the Indian context of: (i) the potential scope of DR technologies, (ii) candidate business models for their adoption, and the corresponding likelihood of adoption, (iii) how households might engage with DR technologies.

For this we will combine the collation of secondary data, with primary data acquired through participatory design focus groups and workshops in India.

Once complete, this new comprehensive prototype will be deployed to study the potential impacts of DR technologies in representative communities in India, selected to represent varying socioeconomic conditions and varying conditions of grid extent and quality.

Key words: Quality of life; energy services; climate change mitigation; developing countries; multi-agent simulation.