Tyler Wilson

Transcript (English)

Introduce your team

Hi my name is Tyler Wilson. I work as the smart building management principal investigator at Green Building Technologies Research Group.
 
Describe your research: Producing power domestically

Here we have our mechanical testing base. Right now we’re doing a project with a local utility company to test micro combined heat and power units. Combined heat and power is an older technology that’s used for power generation on a utility scale and this is a miniaturized version of that technology for residential homes.

This allows you to use a natural gas connection to produce power in your house as well as a heat a hot water tank. It works just like a car motor. It has an engine inside just like a diesel generator you would see on a construction site and a heat exchanger attached to that motor. The waste heat comes off goes to the heat exchanger and transfers to your domestic hot water tank.

Describe your research: Testing electrical loads

Here we have our building management system which is connected to all our instrumentation on the mechanical testing base. It connects all of our sensors and instrumentations to allow us to do testing to simulate residential loads that you typically see in a house so along with this substation here we have about 12 others around the building.

This allows us to connect different building infrastructures and do testing within our Lab and Demonstration Center. In the building itself we have about 450 sensors within the floors the walls the foundation and this allows us to do in-depth analysis on our current architectural envelope as well as mechanical systems and new innovative mechanical systems that are coming in as projects.