Ph.D. Proposal Defense

Data, Energy, and Privacy Management
Techniques for Sustainable Microgrids

Zhichuan Huang

11:00am Tuesday, 11 August 2015, ITE 325b

Sustainable microgrids have gained increasing attention recently, because they can provide the power supply to places i) where the traditional power grid does not exist due to the poor economy or limited number of residences (e.g., islands); and ii) when the traditional power grid is temporally not functioning due to severe weather conditions (e.g., storms). However, in order to achieve sustainability, there are a lot of challenges to be addressed. In this thesis, we propose to investigate three key techniques in sustainable microgrids. First, we investigate the big energy data management problem and present E-Sketch, a middleware for utility companies to gather data from smart meters with much less storage and communication overhead. E-Sketch utilizes adaptive sampling to compress power consumption changes in time domain. Then frequency compression is applied to further compress the sampled data.

The second key technique is the energy management in microgrids. Because energy generation and demand in each individual home and microgrid is not matching, the key challenge of the energy management is to model the existing energy demand and propose novel energy management to reduce the overall energy usage and cost in microgrids. In this technique, we study the theoretical, technical, and economic feasibility of sustainable microgrids. To enable distributed energy management, energy consumption data of different homes needs to be shared in the microgrid. Thus an important problem is how we guarantee that the shared data can only be used for energy management but not revealing the privacy of individual homes in the microgrid. To address this problem, we leverage the unique feature of hybrid AC-DC microgrids and propose the third technique — Shepherd, a privacy protection framework to effectively protect occupants’ privacy. In Shepherd, we provide a generic model for energy consumption hiding from different types of detection techniques.

Committee: Drs. Ting Zhu (chair), Nilanjan Banerjee, Chintan Patel, and David Irwin (UMass Amherst)

Ph.D. Proposal Defense

Holistic Home Energy Management:
From Sensing to Data Analytics

David Lachut

2:00pm Tuesday, 11 August 2015, ITE 325b

As home automation tools become more prevalent, they provide great potential to assist energy conservation and promote sustainable energy use in a way that increases users’ quality of life. This paper proposes the Greenhome System: a software system for using off-the-shelf home automation components and back-end data analytics to provide intelligent home energy management capabilities primarily targeted to renewable powered homes. The system will take input from various sensors and user input to detect user activities, predict home energy consumption, and make energy consumption recommendations to users. To accomplish the project goals, the Greenhome system requires in-home hardware and software components, a mobile component for user interaction, and a server component to tie them together. These components will accomplish tasks of data collection and analysis, activity and anomaly detection, prediction, planning, and recommendation.

This project builds on prior research in several areas, combining such diverse fields as predictive analytics, data visualization and annotation, planning, and recommender systems into a holistic approach. Combining these fields will result in new adaptations and make the overall Greenhome System a novel contribution. Work has begun on the Greenhome System preliminary to this proposal, with published work on residential sensor system design and implementation, data annotation collection, and energy demand prediction. It remains to incorporate automated self-maintenance, user activity detection, and personalized recommendations into a holistic system for home energy management.

Committee: Drs. Nilanjan Banerjee (chair), Ting Zhu, Charles Nicholas, Nirmalya Roy

As the country struggles to attract more women to technology, an article in the Baltimore Business Journal this week explored how women tech leaders in Baltimore are encouraging diverse and inclusive work environments. Ellen Hemmerly, executive director of bwtech@UMBC, and Zuly Gonzalez, founder and CEO of Light Point Security based in bwtech@UMBC, were featured in the article for the example they are setting for women entrepreneurs.

Gonzalez shared her experiences as a women in the cyber security industry, recounting the sexism she has faced in her career. However, she is determined to perverse, saying, “I try not to let that kind of thing affect me.” Hemmerly was also mentioned in the article as one of Baltimore’s several “strong female leaders who others can turn to for inspiration and mentorship.”

“We’re trying to build a stronger innovation economy in Baltimore and Maryland, and we have to harness all the talent and all the brainpower and all ideas to make it happen,” the article quoted Baltimore venture capitalist David Wise as saying. “It’s just common sense to be as inclusive as possible.”

Read “Leveraging leadership to get women to the top of Baltimore’s tech community” in the Baltimore Business Journal.

Here at UMBC our students and alumni understand the importance of education can have on not only our own lives but in the lives of the younger generations. Knowledge allows you to break through social, political, and economic barriers while producing self-pride and a motivation to share the resources we have been given.

Austin Murdock ’15, computer science, shares college advice with students from Bodkin Elementary and Chesapeake Bay Middle School. Murdock presented the students with a motivating and educational message about the lessons that he learned throughout his collegiate career and how the “path you take is not as important as what you get out of it.” He shared his story about how he was accepted to all eight ivy league schools but chose not to attend any of them.

To read the full article, click here.

Dr. Anthony K. Wutoh ‘87, biochemistry & molecular biology, was appointed the Provost and Chief Academic Officer at Howard University. Dr. Wutoh ascends to his new role after educating students since 1996, when he began his career at Howard University as an assistant professor. In his academic career, Dr. Wutoh’s passion for research has resulted in over $50 million dollars in grants from such reputable organizations such as National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Read the full article here.

Have a story of your own to share? Tell us about it in a class note.