ECE – 590 I POWER & ENERGY SYSTEMS SEMINAR
WHEN: Monday, August 28, 2023, 3:00 – 3:50 p.m.
WHERE: ECEB 4070
SPEAKER: Abhiroop Chattopadhyay, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
TITLE: "Contextualized Decision Making in Rural Electrical Infrastructure Design – A Case Study in the Navajo Nation"
ABSTRACT: Nearly 760 million people, comprising approximately 10% of the world’s population, lack access to reliable electrical power. In some cases, entire non-urban populations in many countries continue to live without electricity. Off-grid renewable energy resource (RER) systems have been identified as a technology platform with the potential to address this issue. However, while they show considerable promise in theory, they frequently fail to deliver in practice. It has increasingly become clear that the failures are not due to technological shortcomings in design but are the result of system designers failing to accurately gauge the place-based context of these communities, including user rank of priorities, understanding user-centered perspectives of productive use, and understanding institutional modes of engagement.
A contextualized design framework is proposed that draws upon elements from ethnography, sociology, engineering analysis and decision making for the design of contextually appropriate rural electrical infrastructure. The framework is being developed through a pilot project focused on addressing energy and water needs on the Navajo Nation. This presentation describes some aspects of the pilot project, and how the lessons from the pilot project are being used to fine tune the conceptualized framework. The goal is for the finalized design framework to be a systematic and descriptive process which incorporates societal contexts into mathematical design formulations and decision making.
