James Leverette, Southern Company, and Ben Ollis and Teja Kuruganti, ORNL, give Power and Energy Seminar on Friday, April 5th
James Leverette, Southern Company, and Ben Ollis and Teja Kuruganti, ORNL, will give the CURENT Power and Energy Seminar on Friday, April 5. This seminar may be viewed remotely through ZOOM (see info. toward bottom of email).
CURENT Power and Energy Seminar
Presenters: James Leverette, Southern Company, and Ben Ollis and Teja Kuruganti, ORNL
Time: Friday, April 5, 12:20 PM - 1:10 PM EST
Location: Min H. Kao Building, Room 622
Title: Smart Neighborhood: Cutting-Edge Technology to Power Communities of the Future
Abstract: Smart Neighborhood by Alabama Power is a state-of-the-art, 62-home community in Birmingham, Alabama, featuring high-performance homes (HERS ~45), advanced home automation and a community-scale microgrid. Alabama Power has partnered with Southern Company, the United States Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and other great vendors to develop Smart Neighborhood, which includes the Southeast’s first community-scale microgrid. Learn how this community is serving as a platform to test and evaluate the impact of changing codes and technology to builders, consumers, and the grid, and how lessons learned will shape how homes are built and customer expectations met in the future.
Presenter Bio: Jim Leverette is a research engineer with the Southern Company building energy systems R&D group in Birmingham, AL. Having joined in 2015, Jim is responsible for the research portfolio around residential and commercial HVAC, water heating, automation, and building envelope systems. A large portion of his responsibilities include managing internal and external relationships with a variety of customers, vendors, and external research organizations. He works with them to evaluate pre-commercial technologies and their effectiveness and feasibility for widespread deployment in both laboratory testing and in field trials.
At Southern Company, Jim has worked extensively on the Alabama Power Smart Neighborhood project as the technical lead. He has directly managed more than $5 million and been responsible for the overall design and deployment of the residential building technologies.
Prior to coming to Southern Company, Jim worked for a Rochester, NY based engineering firm as a consultant to NYSERDA focusing on field audits, data logging, engineering and economic analyses for building energy systems. Later, he did consulting work for Entergy in Arkansas managing their energy efficiency and demand response programs. This involved high level field audits and customer education on how to maximize the efficiency of their facility’s operation.
Jim has a Bachelor of Science and Master of Science in mechanical engineering from Tennessee Tech University and is registered as a Professional Engineer and a Certified Energy Manager.
Presenter Bio: Dr. Teja Kuruganti is the Group Leader for Modeling and Simulation in the Computational Sciences and Engineering Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), where he has worked since 2003. He currently leads ORNL activities in developing novel sensors and controls for improving energy efficiency of buildings and novel techniques for enabling grid-integration and responsive building loads. Dr. Kuruganti is also a Joint Faculty Associate Professor in Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Dr. Kuruganti’s R&D expertise includes modeling and development of communications and controls systems, wireless sensor networks, wireless modulation techniques, retrofit sensors and control platforms for improving energy efficiency in buildings and enabling building-to-grid services, low-cost manufacturing techniques for integrated wireless sensors, and collaborative signal and information processing. He won an R&D 100 award in 2012 for co-developing an electromagnetic wave propagation simulation engine for harsh environments. He earned M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
Presenter Bio: Ben Ollis is an R&D Staff member and a Power System Research Engineer at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He has been a member of the Power and Energy Systems group since 2013. He received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering in 2012 and his M.S. in Electrical Engineering in 2014, both from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He has previous utility experience as a student engineer at Duke Energy and as a system operator with Clinton Utilities Board. His primary areas of research include microgrids, device interoperability, inverter controls, and battery energy storage systems.
Zoom Information:
Join from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android: https://tennessee.zoom.us/j/320375975
Or iPhone one-tap (US Toll): +16468769923,320375975# or +16699006833,320375975#
Or Telephone: Dial: +1 646 876 9923 (US Toll) +1 669 900 6833 (US Toll) Meeting ID: 320 375 975
International numbers available: https://zoom.us/u/acJ7jvPLca
Or an H.323/SIP room system: H.323: 162.255.37.11 (US West) or 162.255.36.11 (US East) Meeting ID: 531 399 714
Upcoming Seminars
Friday, April 12th - Ahmet Ohner, NEU; & Fatima Taousser, UTK - TBD
Friday, April 19th - No Seminar - Spring Recess
Friday, April 26th - Dr. Dino Lelic, Quanta Technology - Microgrids as Enablers for DER integration
See the CURENT calendar for more news and seminars
