UMass Faculty Seed Grants

UMass Clean Energy Extension provides seed grants to UMass faculty across all campuses through a periodic Call for Proposals.  We seek faculty collaborators on research topics that are important and timely for clean energy market and policy support, and are open to suggestions for topics from faculty.

Our most recent Call for Proposals resulted in six research projects described below. The next call for proposals has not yet been announced.

Examining and Improving Energy-Related Decision-Making Among Resource Constrained Massachusetts Households

Principal Investigator/Project Leader(s):

Little research is available regarding energy use and sourcing decisions among lower-income households, particularly with respect to the efficacy of various behavioral interventions (e.g., providing social norms information; financial vs. social incentives). There is a similar lack of research that examines the barriers to and facilitators of lower-income households adopting small-scale renewable energy technologies (e.g., rooftop solar). The lack of existing research poses a challenge for regulators, planners, policymakers, advocates and others who are interested in improving energy use and sourcing decisions amongst lower-income individuals for environmental, economic and/or equity reasons. 

Using a combination of experimental and observational methods, the research team will examine the factors that influence how lower-income individuals and households make a variety of energy-related decisions, including consumption behaviors and sourcing choices. In addition, the project will seek to identify and test novel behavioral interventions that may be more effective than traditional approaches with this group.

Integrating Renewable Energy and Energy Storage in New England

Principal Investigator/Project Leader(s):

Project Goal: To investigate the potential for large-scale energy storage in the Massachusetts electrical supply as the penetration of non-dispatchable renewable energy sources increases.

Project Description: Non-dispatchable renewable energy generators, such as wind turbines and solar photovoltaic systems, are being added in increasing numbers to electrical power systems around the world.  As the penetration level increases, energy storage becomes of progressively more value.  For Massachusetts, the penetration of wind and solar into the electrical system is still small enough that additional energy storage is not yet needed.  On the other hand, it is recognized that Massachusetts has access to an enormous offshore wind energy resource.  That resource is large enough that wind energy production could result in very high penetration levels.  Such penetration levels would be even higher due to contributions from photovoltaic systems. At those levels, energy storage could serve an important role. Specific tasks include:

  • Investigating the various types of offshore wind energy storage available and hypothesizing which of them might be most applicable and in what context.
  • Investigating the implications of adding large amounts of energy from wind, specifically offshore wind, to the electrical supply.

Project Report: Utility Scale Energy Storage Options with Offshore Wind

Project Paper: A Design and Analysis Tool for Utility Scale Power Systems Incorporating Large Scale Wind, Solar Photovoltaics and Energy Storage

Massachusetts Biochar Economics Study

Principal Investigator/Project Leader(s):

Project Goal: To study potential for sequestration of forest carbon in agricultural soils in Massachusetts, based on availability of woody biomass, availability of suitable soils for biochar application, commercially available pyrolysis technology, and estimated biochar production cost.

Project Description: Biochar production through a process called “biomass pyrolysis” has the potential to both produce renewable energy and provide net sequestration of atmospheric carbon. Massachusetts may be well situated for biochar production and use, having forest biomass resources, numerous medium-to-large scale commercial and institutional facilities that could use thermal energy from biochar plants, an existing woody biomass heating industry, and farmland for biochar soil application. Stakeholders including forestland owners, the forestry industry, commercial and institutional facility owners, and farmers could be expected to support a biochar industry. 

Report - The Economics of Biochar Carbon Sequestration in Massachusetts

Presentation - The Economics of Biochar Carbon Sequestration in Massachusetts

Smart Solar for a Smarter Grid

Principal Investigator/Project Leader(s):

Project Goal: To further develop the Smart Solar concept in which solar electric systems are made capable of self-regulating their power output based on the needs of the larger grid, resulting in greater solar penetration and increased grid stability.  

Project Description: The cost of solar energy is dropping rapidly, which is spurring dramatic increases in solar capacity. In fact, over the past five years, solar energy generation in the U.S. has increased by over 400%. This rapid adoption of solar energy is both a boon and a curse. Increased adoption of renewables reduces society’s reliance on fossil fuels and puts our nation on the path to energy independence. However, this increased adoption has important (negative) implications on the stability and economics of the electric grid due to the non-dispatchable nature of solar energy production. Large-scale energy storage offers one possible strategy for grid stabilization but large storage deployments are not yet economically feasible. Self-regulating solar electric systems offers another potential solution to grid stability challenges. 

Improved Efficiency through Environmental Control

Principal Investigator/Project Leader(s):

Project Goal: This project will promote energy efficient operations and management practices in educational and public/commercial buildings in Massachusetts by improving and calibrating control strategies for heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems.

Project Description: Since poorly performing buildings are not only uncomfortable, energy intensive, and more expensive to operate, this project will promote energy efficient operations and management practices in educational and public/commercial buildings in Massachusetts by improving and calibrating control strategies for heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems. The project will conduct user studies to establish a set of guiding principles and control strategies about thermal comfort perceptions and performance that will be applied to a broad range of building types across Massachusetts. Finally, in the context of educational and public buildings, the potential to use renewable thermal technologies for HVAC operations will be also be considered.

Solar Policy Effectiveness

Principal Investigator/Project Leader(s):

Project goal: The study will utilize statistical/econometric modeling tools to estimate the impact of individual state-level policies on the growth of solar PV capacity at the commercial scale.

Project Description: The study will utilize statistical/econometric modeling tools to estimate the impact of individual state-level policies on the growth of solar PV capacity at the commercial scale. An analysis of the cost of each policy relative to benefits from reduced GHG emissions as solar power displaces electricity from fossil fuels will also be conducted. Results should identify for policymakers the most cost effective PV adoption policies. This should enable "optimizing" solar adoption policies to accelerate the adoption of Solar PV renewable energy, and expand the solar PV industry in Massachusetts.

Drivers of Growth in Commercial-Scale Solar PV Capacity

Green, Energy Efficient Data Centers

Principal Investigator/Project Leader(s):

Project Goals: (1) To motivate the use and development of data center facilities, in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, to support the IT and knowledge economies, by quantifying the energy savings from using newer data center technologies that are emerging. (2) To suggest simple ways to improve the energy-efficiency hosting servers on campuses or in office settings, either by improving the efficiency of existing server closets or using a prototype of a free air cooling system. 

Project Description: The first goal of this project is to motivate the use and development of data center facilities, in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, to support the IT and knowledge economies, by quantifying the energy savings from using newer data center technologies that are emerging. Massachusetts has, until now, not been a cost-effective state to deploy data centers due to higher relative real-estate and energy costs; emerging green and renewable technologies have the potential to be game changers for Massachusetts and the project will focus on such techniques. The study will particularly focus on the use of renewable solar, renewable open-air cooling and thermal energy storage in data centers. A secondary goal is to suggest simple ways to improve the energy-efficiency hosting servers on campuses or in office settings, either by improving the efficiency of existing server closets or using a prototype of a free air cooling system. Project results should spur the location of Energy Efficient Data Centers, utilizing significantly less cooling energy than the average facility currently uses. This will result in GHG reductions and in added jobs for Massachusetts. The secondary goal, should help improve the efficiency of non-data center server rooms in offices and campuses across Massachusetts resulting in both energy and cost savings for businesses and educational institutions.

Analyzing the Efficiency of a Green University Data Center

Design and Operations Analysis of a Green Data Center