This semester, I worked with a team of two other Georgia Tech students to propose a solution to the Department of Energy's annual JUMP into STEM Grid-Interactive Efficient Buildings challenge. The solution we came up with employs a form of energy storage that currently sits dormant in almost every home across the country: water heaters. These often-neglected but ubiquitous devices allow for significant energy shifting in order to reduce peak energy loads, with potential peak reductions of more than 10% using our proposed algorithm.
I'm proud to say that we won the 2020-21 DOE challenge!