Daily Lobo new mexico
The Independent Student Voice of UNM since 1895
tuesday September 30, 2014 | Volume 119 | Issue 32
Smart grid Poetic play has dreamlike quality system can reduce emissions By Tomas Lujan Campus researchers are developing a smarter way to power the future by giving buildings the ability to communicate. Known as a “smart grid,” the experimental system was installed at UNM’s Mechanical Engineering building in 2005. The system has reduced emissions and cut costs, all while allowing operators to monitor every aspect of the building’s power usage from one location. Hans Barsun, a doctoral candidate and UNM utilities engineer, said the basic idea is to create a communication network between all of the various utility functions in a power system. Enabling the systems to communicate creates a more efficient and interactive way to run an energy system, he said. “We are trying to demonstrate a new way to look at electrical load management,” Barsun said. “It’s not just the buildings or the power, it’s all one big network that can save money and make things more efficient.” The smart grid also provides constant feedback to controllers, allowing the system to be more adaptable to changes in power supply and distribution, resulting in a more reliable power flow, he said. For example, if a given load runs on photovoltaic cells and the sun goes behind a cloud, there will be a drop in available power while demand remains constant. A smart grid enables buildings to redistribute power immediately to offset the temporary drop instead of seeking additional power from energy suppliers to compensate, he said. In terms of savings from the smart grid network, Barsun said it breaks down into a few pieces. Currently, utilities for the Mechanical Engineering building — including steam, chilled water and electricity — now run about $70,000 annually. Some of the systems the smart grid helps control are the building’s solar power, controls on all wet systems, and central air handling units. These changes save an estimated $42,000 a year, Barsun said. However, Barsun said the system in place at the mechanical engineering building is just the first step in optimizing power efficiency at UNM. The savings produced by a campus-wide smart grid would be in the millions, he said.
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Smart grid page 3
Aaron Anglin / Daily Lobo / @aaronjanglin
Anne-Marie Little (left) and Haley Henson (right) perform their scene as Collin Butts’ character lurks in the background in an “As Five Years Pass,” showing at UNM’s Experimental Theatre. The play will run until Oct. 5. See page 6 for Graham Gentz’s review of the play.
Playwright’s vision manifests in Five Years’ blue-themed costuming By Lauren Marvin A lifeless wedding dress sparkled under a blue light upon the stage. A remembrance of what could have been. In just 40 hours, Anna Avery — adjunct professor in theatre and design director — helped to make the seven-layer wedding dress showcased in “As Five Years Pass,” she said. “This is one of my favorite shows to ever design because there was a lot of things we built and there was a lot of freedom to go in interesting ways with the costumes,” Avery said. A total of 23 costumes were created or altered by 20 people in around 30 hours per costume, she said. It was a collaboration effort, Avery said, between the directors, designers and technicians to create effective costumes. Bill Walters, director of “As Five Years Pass,” said he has been wanting to direct the play for a long time. Federico Garcia Lorca wrote the play, in which a total of eight actors switch roles three times. “I think it is one of the most successful attempts that I’ve ever read or seen to
translate poetry into theatric form,” Walters said. “It remains poetic, but it comes alive in a theatrical piece both in the language and in the images he calls for.” During the construction of the play, Walters and Avery discussed the balance between the real and surreal of the script and costumes, he said. “(We were) also trying to capture a bit of essence from Lorca’s time period being the 1920s, so there is some historical period elements to it,” Walters said. “But we were in no way sticking to that hard and fast. Also, a lot of it has a contemporary feel to it too, but not strictly so, either. Things have kind of melded or meshed between this day and age and Lorca’s time period.” In the script, Walters said Lorca uses the color blue to symbolize a dream, an idea Avery and the other costume designers happily embraced. “One of the things we had a lot of fun with is tracking blue elements through all the various costumes,” Walter said. “So there is a young man who comes and is wearing a fairly normal white linen suit except it has blue buttons, or there is a maid who comes who is wearing a
standard black-and-white maid outfit, but she has blue tights and blue lipstick.” Veronica Gamez, assistant costume designer, said she worked closely with Avery on most of the costumes, but was given total control of The Flame. The Flame, played by Rebecca Pressland during the underwater act, has one of the most elaborate costumes. Gamez said it took the team four weeks to bring the design to life. Gamez incorporated the color blue into the costume’s mask, dress and even the handkerchief, she said. “It was actually pretty interesting and fun because I have never done such a surreal (play), I was never able to go out of my box in my other plays, and the other things I’ve done are very straightforward.” Gamez said. “This one was fun because I got to step out of my box, I’ve got to do different things and push my design.” Lauren Marvin is the assistant culture editor at the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at culture@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @LaurenMarvin.
Scientists don’t make light of EM threats By Sayyed Shah
UNM scientists, in collaboration with the University of Maryland, have received a $6 million grant from the federal government to study electronics in highly electromagnetic environments. The grant was awarded by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, which is a basic research funding agency. The office focuses on military assets like communication equipment and computers and how they would react if they were attacked using electromagnetism, said Edl Schamiloglu, distinguished professor of electrical and computer engineering and lead researcher of the project.
Intentional Electromagnetic Interference, or IEMI, is what happens when intense electromagnetic fields are generated by a repeatable, non-explosive, high-power generator, and are then directed to a target by an antenna. These fields can have devastating effects on power grids, military equipment, or anything powered by electricity or controlled by computers, according to a paper by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. “The whole idea of electromagnetic threat is a big problem. This is something that concerns not just military, but the banking systems, the internet, airports, hydro-electric dams and the power grid,” Schamiloglu said. UNM is the leading institute in this project and the University of Maryland is
a subcontractor, he said. Schamiloglu is beginning the research by studying how smaller, less catastrophic electromagnetic events can stress electronics by overloading them, causing unexpected and unpredictable behavior, according to UNM News. “Basically, we are studying how everyday electronics can function when they are slightly stressed. By stressed, I mean when they are operating at voltages that are a little higher than what they are supposed to,” he said. Schamiloglu wants to understand what happens when, for example, there is a voltage fluctuation on a power line and computer chips suddenly operate at six or seven
volts instead of the normal five volts, he said. “We are trying to understand how, at the chip level and the system level, failures might occur,” he said. Earlier approaches to this issue centered on creating databases that were used to calculate the probability of system failures using statistics. Schamiloglu wants to create models that can actually predict when and how a system will fail, and come up with ways to prevent these failures, he said. “The idea here is to have a firstprinciple, science-based approach and try to understand how, at chip and board levels, voltage surges can lead to failure in
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Grant page 3