DCU Research Team to Help Save 25% of Energy Costs
25 September 2009

Dublin City University will partner in a major European Union research project targeting energy efficiency for home and office appliances. The €20 million project “SmartPM” has the aim of reducing European electricity consumption, a vital tactic in reducing green house gases. The technology cooperation involving 17 European companies, research and academic institutes aim to significantly increase energy efficiency savings by up to 25%. This will result in reduced overall CO2 emissions and no compromise in electrical device performance. SmartPM stands for “Smart Power Management for Home and Health” and involves participation from many EU countries namely Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Sweden.

Prof. Patrick McNally of DCU’s Nanomaterials Processing Laboratory is the Irish Principal Investigator on this project, said “We are wasting electricity everywhere: in refrigerators, in air-conditioning systems, in washing machines, in dishwashers and in countless medical diagnostic systems such as hospital x-ray machines. Within this project, we shall focus on developing innovative designs to improve on the efficiency of these products”.

Dr Suresh Uppal, a researcher in the DCU team, says that “ the DCU team shall be involved in supporting the technology development for integrated circuits made with Si, Silicon Carbide (SiC) and SOI (Silicon on Insulator) technologies. The applications targeted will include increasing power efficiency in home appliances (refrigerators, dish washers), office appliances (air conditioners, power supplies for notebooks and other computers) and medical equipment (X-rays machines, ultrasound echographs).”

A financial support of approximately €3.3 million comes from the European Nanoelectronics Initiative Advisory Council (ENIAC). In addition to funding from the EU, Dublin City University also received funding from Enterprise Ireland to carry out their activities in the project. The results of the project will benefit Irish industry and will help grow Irish R&D activities in power electronics and semiconductor packaging.