BBS, or the Brown Bag Seminar, is an academic exchange initiative launched by the Tsinghua Urban Ergonomics Lab with support from many research groups. It serves young scholars committed to research and interested in developments at the frontiers of their fields. Sessions are held from time to time at the Urban Ergonomics Lab in the north wing of the Architecture Building at Tsinghua University.

How can future urban energy systems combine security, economic efficiency, and low carbon emissions?

Building a new energy system based primarily on renewable energy is a key step toward the goals of carbon peaking and carbon neutrality. The unpredictable fluctuations in wind and solar energy pose serious challenges to the secure and efficient operation of urban energy systems. Efforts confined to the energy supply side are increasingly insufficient to meet the combined requirements of security, economic efficiency, and low carbon emissions. This creates new demands for interaction between supply and demand in buildings, transport, industry, and other energy-consuming sectors.

This session of Academic BBS features Xiaochen Liu, assistant professor in the Department of Building Science and Technology, School of Architecture, Tsinghua University, with a presentation entitled Exploring Human Factors Engineering for Smart Energy. Focusing on the demand side of urban energy systems, he will introduce human factors theories and methods to explore future two-way interaction between people and energy systems. He will also discuss applications of these approaches in smart buildings, zero-carbon airports, and computing-resource scheduling platforms. In addition, he will introduce the university's newly established Interest Group on Human Factors Engineering for Future Smart Energy, which provides a platform for exchange and collaboration among students interested in applying AI to the energy demand side.□

About the speaker

Xiaochen Liu is an assistant professor and doctoral supervisor in the Department of Building Science and Technology, School of Architecture, Tsinghua University. His research focuses on flexible energy-use systems and intelligent control for low-carbon buildings. He has conducted in-depth studies of new building energy systems integrating photovoltaics, energy storage, direct-current distribution, and flexible demand, as well as energy interaction between buildings and electric vehicles. He leads projects supported by the Young Scientists Fund of the National Natural Science Foundation of China and subprojects under the National Key R&D Program of China, among others. He has published three scholarly monographs and more than 50 papers in SCI-indexed journals. He was selected for the Young Elite Scientists Sponsorship Program of the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST). His distinctions include the Special Prize of the Science and Technology Progress Award of the Chinese Association of Refrigeration, recognition as a faculty adviser to the runner-up team in the China International College Students’ Innovation Competition, and the Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award of Tsinghua University.