Principal Investigators
Dr David Jenkins, the UK lead investigator, is an Associate Professor in Heriot-Watt’s Institute of Sustainable Building Design (ISBD) within the School of Energy, Geoscience, Infrastructure and Society (EGIS). With a background in building physics and energy modelling, he has led research outputs from projects such as Tarbase, Low Carbon Futures and ARIES, and is a Co-Investigator on the UK National Centre for Energy Systems Integration (CESI). At Heriot-Watt since 2005, he has over 60 publications in the field of energy demand modelling, building simulation, and energy efficiency. Recent work has focussed on the application of statistical techniques for enriching understanding of energy demand data, and modelling, of buildings. He has also carried out work for Scottish and UK Government (DCLG and DECC) reports on low energy building policy.
Dr. Abhijit R. Abhyankar, the Indian lead investigator, is an Associate Professor in IIT Delhi’s Electrical Engineering Department with a background in regulatory and policy issues associated with the Indian power industry. He is a member of the National Reliability Council for Electricity (NRCE) in India. His research interests include grid issues in power markets, smart grids, decentralised control in the multi-agent regime, power system security, reliability and optimization. He is actively involved in projects funded by DST, Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd, Indian Energy Exchange Ltd., Maharashtra Electricity Regulatory Commission (MERC) and a number of private power distribution utilities. This includes analyses of urban distribution network reliability. The total value of projects that he has investigated exceeds 40 Million INR.
Co-Investigators
Dr Andrew Peacock is a Research Fellow in ISBD with a track record extending over 15 years in the field of energy demand research, including projects Tarbase, ORIGIN, CESI and the award-winning SCORRES project. He has led multi-disciplinary teams delivering internationally renowned output on user-centred design of energy management systems, control of micro-generation systems and quantification of price-based demand response initiatives.
Prof Eddie Owens, from Heriot-Watt’s ISBD, has been lead investigator on research projects attracting over £4M of research funding (including ORIGIN and Apatsche), and start-up companies that have secured over £3M of private sector funding.
Dr Sarah Payne is an environmental psychologist in Heriot-Watt’s Urban Institute, with expertise in exploring and understanding people’s interactions with buildings and environmental services. Her research involves use of questionnaires, focus groups, co-production workshops, participatory design, and virtual reality to uncover people’s attitudes, values, affect and behaviour in relation to healthy, sustainable places (resulting in several academic publications and UK Government reports). She is lead investigator on the DeStress project, looking at the effect of urban soundscapes on people, to help create restorative, sustainable societies.
Dr Sandhya Patidar is a lecturer in Statistical Modelling Heriot-Watt’s Institute of Infrastructure and Environment. Her research career is based on inter-disciplinary application of statistical techniques in areas of energy, climate change, flooding, and human behaviour. She has expertise in statistical/time-series modelling, Hidden Markov Modelling (HMM), Stochastic Processes, Uncertainty and Data Analysis, Non-Linear Dynamical System, Bifurcation Analysis and Chaos. These have been applied to a range of projects, including Low Carbon Futures, ARIES and CESI.
Prof. David Flynn is an Associate Professor and Founder of the Smart Systems Group at Heriot-Watt’s Institute of Signals, Systems and Sensors (ISSS). He is also the Associate Director (and Heriot-Watt lead) of the CESI consortium, and an invited member of the Scottish Power Energy Networks Stakeholder group. He currently leads a £1.5M research portfolio in smart systems applied to energy networks.
Dr Valentin Robu is Assistant Professor at Heriot-Watt’s ISSS in smart grid systems, specializing in using artificial intelligence and “big data” techniques to analyse energy systems. He was PI in a number of projects funded by the Scottish Government and InnovateUK that developed techniques for integrating local renewable generation with community energy demand in “weak grid” environments. In these projects he worked with community energy developers in Isle of Arran and Orkney. He is also a Co-Investigator of CESI.
Dr Vigneswara Ilavarasan, from IIT Delhi, has a PhD in sociology and a background in technology adoption and usage in India. His present location, in the Dept. of Management Studies, offers additional capacity in understanding business perspective of energy usage in communities. He is trained in both qualitative and quantitative social research methods, including tools like SPSS and nVivo for data analysis. He has undertaken numerous large scale surveys, including a multi-country study on customer relationship management in the electricity sector in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. He has been a visiting Research Fellow at the United Nations University – School of Computing and Society (Macau, China).
Dr. Anandarup Das, Assistant Professor at IIT Delhi’s Electrical Engineering Department, works in the area of high power electronics and motor drives for various applications in electrical industries. He worked for 3 years in Siemens Power Electronics Centre (R&D) under Oil and Gas Division in Norway as Senior Development Engineer. During this time he was involved in design, development and fabrication of sub-sea Variable Speed Drives fed from a multilevel converter. During his post-doctoral tenure at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, he carried out research on medium voltage, high power converters with high reliability and fail-safe operation. His research interest includes power quality, modular converters and power electronics.
Dr Himanshu J. Bahirat, within the Department of Electrical Engineering at IIT Bombay, works in the area of DC power systems, offshore wind farms and switching transients in the power system. He has undertaken projects on investigation of switching on rural agriculture feeders in which means to reduce losses and increase efficiency were investigated. Other ongoing projects include HVDC grids and integration of wind energy into the power grid. The projects being investigated are funded by DST, utilities and private sponsoring agencies.
Dr. T. Srinivas has a background in Architecture and City Planning with over three decades of experience in consultancy, research and education in the built environment. His doctorate was from the Faculty of Architecture, University of Sydney in impact of adjacent buildings on the outdoor thermal comfort conditions of people, where he was awarded the ADCOS scholarship. His research interests are focused on thermal comfort, energy efficient and sustainable built environment, and evaluation of urban open spaces, with two “Best Paper awards” (including PLEA 2000 conference). He has co-authored over 20 research publications and presentations and one book chapter and completed one MHRD GOI sponsored research project. He has served on many professional architectural education bodies and is a member of EDRA, IIA, ITPI.
Researchers
Dr Kumar Biswajit Debnath, at Heriot-Watt, is working on building energy modelling and understanding landscapes of energy use across different regions of India
Dr Olufolahan Osunmuyiwa, at Heriot-Watt, is carrying out surveys and interviews to better understand practices, behaviours and cultural factors on energy use in Indian households.
Dr Benoit Couraud, at Heriot-Watt, is attempting to understand the performance of the low-voltage grid in supplying electricity to residential areas, and how changes in demand will impact this.
T K Jayasree, J Sivapriya and V Lakshmi Visakha are part of the research team at NIT Trichy, working on a range of topics related to energy use and comfort in Indian communities.
Other Partners
Auroville Foundation are providing data from and interaction with a unique community in Tamil-Nadu. This case-study will help investigate the relationship between occupants and low-energy living.
Enzen Global Solutions have a wealth of experience in the energy and utilities sectors, providing an important link with the energy industry in the regions of India being studied
Panacean Energy Solutions are engaged with finding power management solutions for local and national governments in India, with experience across sectors involving energy efficiency and renewable energy.
CEDRI is also supported by the UK National Centre for Energy Systems Integration (CESI). Led by Newcastle University, but involving Heriot-Watt, Edinburgh, Durham and Sussex universities, this consortium is establishing a network of communication around the UK in the area of energy systems. It is also carrying out original research to improve the modelling of energy demand, supply and infrastructure for future planning of the UK energy network.