HVAC
A Surprise R&D 100 Award for Pecan Street and Our Partners
Are we excited about winning an R&D 100 Award? Absolutely. Are we trying to humble brag? Maybe a little. In reality, this award is a recognition of a fantastic start. We’re excited to continue our research and to dive even deeper into the changing and challenging energy system research that we’ve done for 12 years.
Restore OKC Brings Pecan Street’s Research Network to Oklahoma City
Restore OKC has teamed up with the University of Oklahoma and Pecan Street Inc. to help launch an energy efficiency and awareness program in northeast Oklahoma City. We’re already recruiting participants, conducting energy audits and installing equipment that will measure how these improvements affect participants’ energy use and costs.
A Simple Solution to A/C Driven Energy Demand: Smarter Cooling
By Cavan Merski – Download our new analysis, which examines how behavioral tendencies (like manual thermostat adjustments) and home technology (like smart thermostats) can significantly reduce electricity demand for air conditioning during hot Texas summers.
eGauge Tour: A Quick Tutorial for Pecan Street Participants
By Rachel Jenkins, Director of Operations, Pecan Street – If Pecan Street has installed an eGauge in your home and you’re looking for a quick guide for viewing your data, you’re in the right place. Below you’ll find everything you need to know to log in and nerd out.
Community, Local Experts and Showing Up Have Been Key to Pecan Street’s Expansion
By Rachel Jenkins, Director of Operations, Pecan Street – My recent trip to Culebra, Puerto Rico, where we’re recruiting about 50 families to participate, was further proof that community, local experts and simply “showing up” have been key to our efforts.
Pecan Street’s Expansion to Puerto Rico Promises Energy Data Goldmine for Researchers and Electricity Customers Everywhere
By Cavan Merski, data analyst, Pecan Street – Our expansion into Puerto Rico is unique; nowhere else on Earth can you find the island’s combination of energy challenges and energy ambition.
Energy Efficiency Does More Than Save Money and Reduce Emissions. It Can Strengthen the Grid.
By Cavan Merski – Energy-efficient homes provide a variety of benefits to customers and the grid. But energy efficiency can be leveraged to produce even more bang for its buck by enabling certain types of demand response.
Heat Pumps 101: Understanding the Technology That Will Drive Residential Decarbonization
By Cavan Merski When you spend your day surrounded by co-workers, you can forget that not everyone knows the same stuff you do. That’s especially true in areas that intersect at Pecan Street, like energy and data. I was reminded of this recently when talking with friends about some of the incentives included in the […]
Want to Save the Planet? Call an Electrician First. Better Yet, Become an Electrician Yourself.
By Richard Smith – We’ve heard for years that “we all have a role to play” in creating a cleaner economy. As the electrification trend ramps up, we’re about to see just how critical electricians will be.
Help Save The Grid, Get Free Stuff: Our New Study Needs 50 More Participants in Austin
By Rachel Jenkins, director of operations, Pecan Street Inc. – Want to reduce your home’s grid impact without turning up your AC? You may be a perfect fit for a study we’re conducting with the University of Michigan that will test automatic, on-the-fly conservation events without adjusting your thermostat.
Pecan Street on KXAN: Why One Austin Neighborhood Tracks Energy Use Down to the Circuit
AUSTIN (KXAN) — Every light bulb, microwave and electric vehicle charger — tracked! That’s what around 300 homes are doing in the Mueller neighborhood in east Austin. They’re doing it as part of a research project called Pecan Street, and the data they’re collecting could reshape energy usage in the years to come.
During Texas’ Heatwave, Every Degree Matters. And so Do Conservation and Efficiency.
By Scott Hinson, chief technology officer, Pecan Street – For the second time in a week, Texas’ grid operator (ERCOT) and local utilities yesterday issued “calls for conservation” as the state bakes under a prolonged heatwave. Among the requests: increase your thermostat setpoint to 78 degrees to reduce state-wide air conditioner load. It’s unsurprising that air conditioning increases electricity demand during a heatwave. But it may surprise you to know just how powerful a driver it is and how close it can push the state toward a real problem.
Pecan Street’s JupyterHub Can Help Rapidly Scale and Iterate Your Research
By Cavan Merski, data analyst, Pecan Street – To allow better access and more sophisticated analysis of this data, we launched our own Jupyterhub, a multi-user server for Jupyter Notebooks designed to support large-scale analysis by using GPU and memory based on a server rather than a local machine. It also allows multiple users – like groups of students or researchers – to share the same document at the same time.
More Clean Power in Texas will Require More Grid Transmission and DER Development
By Cavan Merski, data analyst, Pecan Street – The ERCOT power grid is back in the news. Texas experienced its hottest May on record and June has seen consistent record-breaking temperatures as well. ERCOT has been busy trying to balance extremely high grid demand with various electric generation plant outages. On June 12, ERCOT recorded its highest ever grid demand of over 75GW. That record only lasted one week before grid demand climbed to more than 76 GW on June 20. And we're wasting emission-free wind and solar power.
Cooling a Warming Planet: What Homes in Texas and New York Can Teach Us About Cooling Demand Around the Globe
By Cavan Merski, data analyst, Pecan Street – We were interested to see how our homes in these two regions compared now and what will happen in the future as climate change brings warmer summers to most of the country, so we performed a series of regressions to explore differences in the cooling load between homes in Austin, TX homes and Ithaca, NY.
First Look at High-Resolution Home Energy Data in Puerto Rico Suggests Vastly Different Challenges and Opportunities.
By Cavan Merski, data analyst, Pecan Street – The first Pecan Street home in Puerto Rico is online, and we already see some differences compared to the hundreds of homes in our network in Texas, New York, California and Colorado.
A Tale of Two February Freezes – Can Last Year’s Grid Failure and This Month’s Storm be Compared?
By Scott Hinson, chief technology officer, Pecan Street – The recent freeze gave us an opportunity to compare electricity use in our research network before and during the event to how people used power during last year’s crisis. Did they learn any tips or tricks? Did they panic heat their homes to prepare for power outages? Did they charge their cars any differently? Here's what we saw.
Pecan Street Joins Eaton Team to Improve Grid Reliability with Renewables
(October 2, 2020 — AUSTIN, TX) Eaton Corporation has convened a team of researchers, including Pecan Street Inc., to develop a next-generation grid services solution to improve the overall efficiency of the electric grid and to optimize renewable energy generation.
COVID-19 is Changing Residential Electricity Demand
By Scott Hinson, chief technology officer, Pecan Street - As the patterns of our lives shift in response to COVID-19, we decided to take a look at how our research participants’ energy profiles have changed. Not surprisingly, they’re using more energy. But how much, and for what?
Greentech Media: A Texas-Sized Gas-for-Electricity Swap
Converting Texas homes to electric heat would reduce climate-warming pollution, save Texas households up to $452 annually on their utility bills, and flip the state from a summer-peaking to a winter-peaking system.
Utility Dive: ERCOT weathers steamy August, but could Texas become a winter-peaking system?
Shifting from gas to electricity for winter heating "would result in increased winter electricity demand peaks," the report found. "When combined with the reduction in summer peak demand, the increase in winter peak demand would flip Texas from a 'summer peaking' to a 'winter peaking' system."
Pecan Street Whitepaper Examines Emission and Grid Impact of All-Electric Residential Heating in Texas
A study commissioned by Pecan Street Inc. examining the possibility of converting single-family residential heating in the ERCOT service area from natural gas to electric power concluded that the state could achieve significant reductions in climate and local air pollution and save Texans money through lower monthly utility bills.
Pecan Street @ 10: An Innovation Lab in the Heart of Texas’ Innovation Capital
By Scott Hinson, CTO, Pecan Street – We need our electricity generation, use, and storage to be smarter, better connected, and more efficient. Thanks to what we’ve built over the last 10 years, these are the kinds of advances we are able to accelerate at Pecan Street’s lab.