Research Project

Energy & Appliance Standards for Plug Loads: Assessing Current Needs and Future Opportunities

Abstract

Plug loads are one of the fastest growing categories of energy use in residential and commercial buildings. Plug loads accounted for 40 percent of California residential electricity consumption and 27 percent of California commercial electricity consumption in 2018. With more and more devices being brought into and used in buildings, it is expected that the total energy use for plug loads will continue to increase. Plug load devices are typically not monitored nor controlled. Lack of effective, cost-effective appliance standards for these devices contributes to energy waste, greenhouse gas emissions and increased costs for business owners and consumers. The goal is to identify non-covered plug load devices with the most potential to inform future codes and standards (C&S) for energy efficiency or load management, and develop C&S recommendations and standardized test procedures to quantify their energy use for compliance purposes.

Motivation/Research Problem

Plug loads are one of the fastest growing categories of energy use in residential and commercial buildings. Plug loads accounted for 40 percent of California residential electricity consumption and 27 percent of California commercial electricity consumption in 2018. With more and more devices being brought into and used in buildings, it is expected that the total energy use for plug loads will continue to increase. Plug load devices are typically not monitored nor controlled. Many of these devices have no power management capabilities and are powered continuously at full output. In addition, many of these plug loads are not regulated at the State or Federal level. Lack of effective, cost-effective appliance standards for these devices contributes to energy waste, greenhouse gas emissions and increased costs for business owners and consumers.

Research Team

Lead Researchers

Bingbing Li, Manufacturing Systems Engineering
Kourosh Sedghisigarchi, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Collaborators

Xunfei Jiang, Computer Science
Josh Dean, California Energy Alliance (CEA)
Joy Pixley, Calplug at University of California Irvine
Keith Graeber, CLTC at UC Davis

Student Team

Chenhao Wang
Jianhao Zhu, Mechanical Engineering

Funding

Funding Agency: California Energy Commission (CEC)
Funding Program: Advance Plug Load

Alignment, Engagement and Contributions

The needs of standard & codes in Advance Plug Load from CA state.

Research Questions and Objectives

Identify plug load devices with the most potential for cost-effective energy savings
Develop test procedures to reliably quantify energy use & related performance attributes for compliance purposes
Test devices to determine energy consumption in active, standby, sleep, idle and/or other operating modes
Analyze test data and extrapolate results to determine specific C&S opportunities
Model the impact of the C&S recommendations to determine statewide savings and related impacts.

Research Methods

One of the most effective ways to reduce plug load energy use is through the adoption of device-level appliance energy standards. In order to identify achievable energy savings opportunities, however, research must be completed to develop a market and manufacturing understanding of each unregulated device type, its subsystems, potential and existing operating modes, and its range of energy use and demand. This will lead to new codes and standards opportunities for these plug load devices focused on such things as maximum power ratings, mandatory operational states (e.g. sleep or standby power use) and minimum component-level efficiencies. In addition, future codes and standards will require specification of existing test procedures or development of new test or performance verification procedures to quantify energy use and, in the future, determine code compliance.

Research Deliverables and Products

S&C recommendations for energy efficiency of commercial lab equipment category Journal papers

Research Timeline

3 year project 03/01/2021-03/31/2024