ELEVATE Research

ELEVATE research takes place at the nexus of renewable energy generation and storage, the electric grid, energy policy, and the global climate. Students and faculty work together to figure out how the design of technologies, grid algorithms, market solutions, and policy mechanisms could be fundamentally changed, to account for the complex and shifting realities of the electricity system, the goals of social and economic equity, and the uncertain and changing nature of the climate. This vision requires convergence between engineering, computer science, natural sciences, and the social sciences.

Publications from all ELEVATE faculty are collected on our Google Scholar page.

Publications from all ELEVATE faculty are also available on our UMass Amherst Scholarworks page.

Example Projects

Community Benefits from Energy Storage

Energy storage systems, such as batteries or hot water tanks, are used and owned in different ways around the world. Communities with lower access to capital can benefit from cooperative ownership to defray upfront costs, and the design of these arrangements may differ between developed and developing countries. How can community-ownership, utility-ownership, and other arrangements affect reliability, customer autonomy, and cost of energy storage? And how do the incentives for storage adoption affect equity? In this project, ELEVATE researchers are modeling storage decisions under different pricing schemes and consumer behavior patterns. Metrics for quantitative modeling analyses will be informed by qualitative elicitation of community values around energy technology.

Electrifying Home Heating for Cost Savings and Decarbonization

Holyoke, MA is a historic mill-town with a linguistically and ethnically diverse population. Residents of Holyoke have been confronting post-industrial decline, high poverty, and high unemployment for decades. Heating is a major cost burden for low-income residents, as well as one of the biggest contributors to carbon emissions. Most buildings depend either on fossil fuels, such as oil and gas, or inefficient electric resistance heating. Replacing these heating sources with electric heat pumps can lead to significant carbon reduction and cost savings. ELEVATE researchers are analyzing electricity usage data from the local municipal utility to identify good candidates for transitioning to electric heat pumps, while also analyzing demographic information to ensure that the benefits of this transition are distributed equitably.

Demographic Disparities in Financial Returns to Solar

Solar photovoltaic (PV) technology is a promising source of renewable energy. Federal and state mandates, incentives, and subsidies increase solar PV adoption and hasten the energy transition. However, these policies are designed with adoption as the main metric of success and fail to consider other benefits to solar PV adoption like the stream of financial returns over time. ELEVATE researchers are investigating the distribution of financial returns to solar PV adoption by system ownership status, income, and race. Current results suggest that the form of participation in the solar market (leasing or owning) has significant implications for the equitable distribution of financial returns.