Ten plug-in hybrid vehicles, or PHVs, have been added to a University of Colorado Boulder study that has been examining user experiences and system interactions since September 2010 in the local smart-grid environment.

The increase will allow researchers from CU-Boulder’s Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute, or RASEI -- a joint venture with the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory -- to gather data from a broader base of participants. The loan of Prius cars from Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. Inc. will expand the originally supplied fleet to a total of 28.

“RASEI’S expertise in analyzing trends in consumer use of energy gives us an opportunity for research at this critical nexus of the electric utility and transportation industries as they transition to the future,” said Michael Knotek, RASEI director. “We are delighted that this project is valuable to Toyota.”

The Boulder location presents the opportunity for study participants to track their household electricity use through smart-grid technology, and for researchers to monitor the performance of Toyota’s first-generation lithium-ion drive battery at high altitudes, in cold weather and in mountainous terrain.

The cars are circulated in nine-week intervals among randomly selected households. Participants receive a “smart plug” -- a device installed in home garages -- from Xcel Energy that allows online monitoring of their car’s electricity use and their home’s energy consumption. There also are numerous dashboard displays in the PHVs that show gas mileage when driving in electric mode and hybrid mode.

The PHV demonstration vehicles can be fully charged in approximately three hours using a standard 110-volt electrical outlet and can cruise in electric-only mode for about 14 miles. For longer distances, the PHVs revert to hybrid mode and operate like regular Prius cars.

“One of RASEI’s goals is to establish public-private partnerships that bring together academic, industry and government lab research,” said Knotek. “The PHV study, supported by Toyota with the integral participation of Xcel Energy, is the first of many RASEI projects that reflects this type of comprehensive and valuable collaboration.”

The study’s principal investigator is Barbara Farhar, RASEI’s senior research associate. The co-principal investigator is Dragan Maksimovic, CU-Boulder professor of electrical, computer and energy engineering.

For more information on RASEI visit http://rasei.colorado.edu.
For more information on Toyota’s plug-in hybrid demonstration and research program visit http://www.toyota.com/esq/. 

Contact:
Janet Braccio, 303-499-9031
janetbraccio@comcast.net
Alison Peters, 303-492-3490
alison.peters@colorado.edu
Elizabeth Lock, CU media relations, 303-492-3117
elizabeth.lock@colorado.edu

A small smile appeared on the young girl’s face as she listened to the high-pitched sound coming from the whiffle ball. The sound helped the elementary student locate the ball after her classmate hit it from a specially designed baseball tee.

Both of the students are blind. On a recent afternoon, they were in a classroom at the University of Colorado Boulder’s Integrated Teaching and Learning Program and Laboratory testing toys designed by first-year engineering students. The students are enrolled in CU engineering instructor Seth Murray’s freshman projects class.

“It’s a great experience for the students because they learn a lot about basic engineering design and testing, how to manufacture prototypes and they get to work with clients,” Murray said.

This particular project required student teams to design playground toys for children who are blind. Each team had eight days to complete the task, which includes having a test model for the children to try out during the demonstration in the lab.

“This project originated because it is needed by physical education teachers and kids,” Murray said. “PE is something that a lot of blind students in the country get excluded from more than they should. As engineers, we’re trying to develop solutions that help people and this project is a great fit.”

Rachel Gudenzi and Katherine Powers’ team worked to design a tether ball that would be safe for blind children. Powers learned a lot about the difficulty of taking a product from the lab to real life.

“It’s really different when you’re thinking about what someone is going to do with your product, and then when you watch them play with the toy you developed you see that they might do things differently than you expected,” Powers said.

Murray said he enjoys teaching the class because it gives students a good example of what engineering is really like.

“Engineering is building prototypes and testing them, and working with customers to figure out what they need and then meeting those requirements,” Murray said. “These are freshman engineers so they don’t have a lot of experience in design yet, but this project gives them a big dose of it.”

Overall, the project also shows the students the value of teamwork.

“One of the things I learned was that you have to work together to solve problems,” Gudenzi said. “Through out the rest of our entire careers we’re going to be working with other people to solve different problems and taking everybody’s ideas into consideration is the biggest thing that I have taken from this class.”

Murray directs the College of Engineering and Applied Science’s Undergraduate Engineering Management and Entrepreneurship program. The program, which works in partnership with the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship in the Leeds School of Business, helps undergraduate engineering students leverage their technical knowledge for business success in today’s highly competitive global marketplace.

Alison Jaggar, a CU-Boulder Professor of Distinction in philosophy and women and gender studies, is a pioneer in introducing feminist concerns into philosophy and in establishing the discipline of women and gender studies.

Professor Jaggar’s recent work introduces gender as a category of analysis in the philosophical debate on global justice. Currently, Jaggar is a member of "Fempov," a multidisciplinary and international research project whose aim is to produce a new poverty standard or metric capable of revealing the gendered dimensions of global poverty. In addition, she is exploring the potential of a naturalized approach to moral epistemology for addressing moral disputes in contexts of inequality and cultural difference.

As a founding member of the Society for Women in Philosophy and a member of the American Philosophical Association, Jaggar has taken a lead role in working to improve the global status of women. She works in the areas of contemporary social, moral and political philosophy, often from a feminist perspective. Jaggar’s recent and forthcoming books include Just Methods: An Interdisciplinary Feminist Reader (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Press, 2008), Abortion: Three Perspectives, with Michael Tooley, Philip E. Devine and Celia Wolf-Devine (Oxford University Press, 2009); Pogge and his Critics (Polity 2010); and Gender and Global Justice (forthcoming; Polity 2013). She is also planning a co-authored book on Ethics Across Borders.

In recognition of her distinguished service, Jaggar is this year’s winner of the university’s Elizabeth D. Gee Memorial Lectureship Award. The award honors an outstanding faculty member for efforts to advance women in academia, interdisciplinary scholarly contributions and distinguished teaching. It is the only award across the University of Colorado System that specifically recognizes outstanding work on women’s issues and efforts to advance women in the academy, and is conferred yearly by the CU Faculty Council’s Women’s Committee.

Professor Jaggar will receive the award at CU Women Succeeding: The 10th Annual Professional Development Symposium, set for Feb. 23-24 at CU-Boulder. During the Feb. 24 symposium luncheon, Jaggar will present her scholarly work in an address titled, “The Feminization of Global Poverty: How Can Philosophy Help?” Due to high demand, registration for the symposium already has reached capacity.