Sixteenth International Conference on Environmental, Cultural, Economic & Social Sustainability

Abstract

The utility infrastructure currently in place that supports global water and power usage presents several potentially serious issues. Surface and groundwater supplies can fall short of demand, a problem projected to become worse with projected climate variability and future population growth. Emissions from fossil fuel-based power generation and their increased atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations can lead to serious global consequences with regard to aspects well beyond the climate itself (e.g. agricultural food supply, or sea level). Even with the continued development of renewable energy systems that harvest wind and solar power, centralized utility systems leave large portions of society vulnerable to natural hazards and attacks. In turn, a critical need exists to create utility systems that can mitigate these potentially disastrous societal, economic, and environmental problems. We are developing and testing a home utility management system (or HUMS) that can potentially provide the solution. The HUMS is a decentralized utility model based on renewable resources that enables individual homes to produce a substantial portion of their own power (with solar panels, a wind turbine, and a residential battery) and water (through rain harvest and water storage). The utility system is integrated into a home computer that displays both current power and water storage levels and the expected future availability of water and power resources (through high quality probabilistic weather prediction data). Here we describe the current status of the development and evaluation of the HUMS system at Texas Tech University in the United States and the plans for production.