Integrating Technologies
Ram Narayanamurthy is a technical executive at the Electric Power Research Institute, Palo Alto offices and laboratories.
PUF met with one of the leading experts on improving the energy efficiency and overall quality of new and existing buildings, Ram Narayanamurthy, at an awesome curry restaurant in downtown Oakland, not far from the Palo Alto offices and laboratories of EPRI; not far geographically though further when accounting for Silicon Valley traffic. Downtown Oakland is booming with new building construction all around us. Narayanamurthy pointed out that highly energy efficient office building there, that highly energy efficient low-income housing village there. So it was the perfect background for this conversation on the fascinating future of buildings.
PUF's Steve Mitnick: What do you do at EPRI?
Ram Narayanamurthy: My job at EPRI is to understand what is happening in the building environment, and what it means to the energy industry, particularly to the utility industry. The focus of the work is looking at how the building environment is changing with the advent of new technologies, and with how customers are adapting to new technologies.
Then it's to understand how those technologies work within the building environment, but also how those technologies are going to be integrating and interacting with the grid of the future. As we start moving toward a cleaner, more customer-centric grid, it's to understand how that customer-centricity is impacting the utility grid.