Mission

Using information systems and science to increase the efficiency and reduce the carbon footprint of energy systems.

Vision

Researchers in the ISS4E laboratory will apply their expertise in Information Systems and Sciences to find innovative solutions to large-scale problems in energy systems, working synergistically with researchers in related disciplines, as well as with partners in industry, and aiming to have impact both in Canada and around the world

Motivation

The production, distribution, and consumption of energy underlies modern civilization. Traditional energy systems are centralized, with carbon-intensive means of production, wasteful transmission and distribution technologies, minimal energy storage, infrequent monitoring, and inefficient models of consumption.

Future energy systems will feature distributed energy production, vastly more storage, tens of millions of stochastic renewable-energy sources, and the use of communication technologies both to allow precise matching of supply to demand and to incentivize appropriate consumer behaviour. Energy systems of the future will have an architecture like the Internet, i.e., a large-scale loosely coupled set of distributed and heterogeneous systems.

Our research hypothesis is that technologies and concepts developed for the Internet will play a key role in future energy systems.

This insight, described in more detail in this position paper (http://blizzard.cs.uwaterloo.ca/keshav/home/Papers/data/10/greennet.pdf) is the basis for the research being conducted by members of this group.

Mailing list

If you are interested in joining the ISS4E mailing list, please fill this form (https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/iss4e). Mailing list archives are here (https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/pipermail/iss4e/).