IST Field of Specialization

 

Since its creation in 1911, Instituto Superior Técnico is the largest and most reputed school of Engineering, Science and Technology and Architecture in Portugal. At IST, we aim to give our students and alumni the education and the knowledge tools to improve, to change and to shape society through science, technology, and entrepreneurship. We provide top quality higher education, strongly exposed to Research, Development and Innovation (RD&I) activities, immersing our students in an exciting and global environment geared towards solving the challenges of the XXIst Century.

 

The Mechanical Engineering Department is leading since 2007 an educational and research initiative in Sustainable Energy Systems that focus on the Energy Planning and Policy, Smart Energy Networks and Sustainable Built Environment areas. The latest includes a set of research activities that are offered as a field of specialization within the SELECT+ program:

 

• Energy Systems Design and Optimization

Leveraging on the use of software tools like ENERGYPLAN and DER-CAM, the focus in this research field is to understand how the built environment will evolve in the next decade to address the net zero energy building paradigm. The focus is mostly building retrofit, but also on the construction for developing countries, exploring strategies like modular construction. All solutions must foster the integration of renewable energy resources, a thorough energy system integration and energy efficiency measures and strategies.

 

• Energy Monitoring and Control

Energy is for most buildings users an invisible good that needs to be understood to be properly manage. This includes providing the best information possible about energy consumption too all types of users, from the energy management and maintenance teams to owners and users. At IST, we have an laboratory (EBLab) where it is possible to monitor the consumption of a campus building using 120 meters (electricity gas and enthalpy) in real time and test new control solutions. In particular, we want to develop control strategies where the building adapts to consumers behaviors, instead of controlling users to adapt to building’s needs (based on KNX).

 

• Consumer Behavior

Users behavior is assumed as a large responsible of the energy misuse of energy. At IST we are learning how consumers behave in terms of energy use at the residential (with smart metering test beds that cover more than 200 consumers around Lisbon) and at the workplace level (in EBLab), in close collaboration with social sciences researchers and includes correlating survey information with real time monitoring. The objective is to understand how much of the energy consumption is really due to behavioral patterns and what are the control mechanisms that can be defined to change them.
 

 

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