The project is funded by the US Department of Energy and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

Rajit Gadh, director of UCLA's Smart Grid Energy Research Center (SMERC), and his colleagues from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science are leading the charge to build and test new smart-grid technologies.

As part of that effort, Mr Gadh’s team is using the campus as an experimental lab to observe how wireless sensing and control systems can help create the smart grid.

Smart-grid technologies can lead to increased energy efficiency, lower electricity costs and a significantly reduced carbon footprint.

The UCLA WINSmartGrid (Wireless Internet Smart Grid) is a network platform that allows electrically operated machines and appliances such as plug-in electric vehicles, washers, dryers and air conditioners to be wirelessly monitored, connected and controlled through a wireless communications framework.

The technology connects the machines and smart meters to the WINSmartGrid web service, which receives real-time feeds from utilities and external sources on the price of power at any time of day and other information. Control signals can subsequently be sent via the WINSmartGrid network, which in turn can dynamically control various appliances in real time.

“We’re also working on being able to send a signal for electricity to flow back into the grid, be it energy that has been collected by solar panels or electricity that has been stored in the batteries of electric vehicles,” Mr Gadh said. “Utilities want to be able to do that, and some are willing to pay for it. So now the priority is to demonstrate that. Once we demonstrate it, people will create markets for it. This research is important to KIER too.”

Mr Gadh envisions electric vehicles guzzling energy into their batteries overnight, when power is cheap, and then dispensing it back into homes and offices during the day, when electricity demand is at its highest. In UCLA's Parking Structure 9, located next to the retrofitted engineering buildings, Mr Gadh has installed two EV charging stations with devices that collect and wirelessly transmit data about electricity usage back to his lab.

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