fbpx SPARK Lab Wins Best Paper Award at 2021 IEEE ICRERA Conference | University of Kentucky College of Engineering

SPARK Lab Wins Best Paper Award at 2021 IEEE ICRERA Conference

November 23, 2021

The paper is authored by students Hope Anderson, Evan Jones, postdoc Abdullah Al Hadi, and ECE Professor Dan M. Ionel, L. Stanley Pigman Chair in Power.  

The paper “Power Factor and Reactive Power in US Residences - Survey and EnergyPlus Modeling,”, authored by SPARK and PEIK researchers from the University of Kentucky (UK), has received a Best Paper Award at the 10th edition of the International Conference on Renewable Energy Research and Applications (ICRERA). The event was held in a hybrid format, in-person in Istanbul, Turkey and online via web conference. Recent annual editions of the conference took place in Glasgow, Scotland; Brasov, Romania; San Diego, California; and Birmingham, England.

The research covered in the paper benefited of support from the Department of Energy through the ENAGE project led by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). A growing number of electronic loads for modern appliances are present in residential electric power distribution systems. It has become increasingly more important to consider the power factor (PF) of residential communities with a view at opportunities for energy savings. Following a survey based on literature and publicly available information, the paper proposes a procedure for the calculation of an equivalent PF employing experimental data provided by smart meters. Also included in the paper is a proposed simulation technique employing the widely used EnergyPlus software for building energy modeling.

The authors of the award-winning paper are featured in the photo from left to right: Dr. Abdullah Al Hadi, Postdoctoral Researcher; Hope Anderson, ECE Undergraduate Research Fellow and NASA REU student; Dr. Dan M. Ionel, ECE Professor and L. Stanley Pigman Chair in Power; and Evan S. Jones, PhD student and GAANN Fellow. The authors' version of the paper manuscript is available on the SPARK Lab website