marquette in the world
Heat
Engineering lab helps keep us warm in winter
By Alex Runner
ILlustrations by John Lambert
LIKE MOST PEOPLE IN NEW MEXICO, Pat O’Connell is not accustomed to freezing temperatures — not even in the dead of winter. But as senior gas supply planner for the state’s largest utility, he has to be ready for whatever the weather brings. It’s his job to ensure that homeowners, businesses and government buildings all over New Mexico have enough heat no matter how cold it gets outside.
That’s why last October O’Connell contacted Marquette’s GasDay project in the College of Engineering. It’s a good thing he did. Just one month later, the southwestern part of the country was pounded with snow and freezing rain. O’Connell’s company, Public Service Company of New Mexico, had “peak” days, which are the coldest days the utility has to deliver natural gas to customers — gas that is in higher demand because of the frigid temperatures.
 “We started getting a stretch of really cold weather in late November,” he says. “Then during New Year’s weekend it snowed for 40-straight hours. It was the most snow in New Mexico since 1959.” The utility company was prepared thanks to the behind-the-scenes work of the students and faculty who run GasDay.
GasDay hasn’t just attracted attention in New Mexico. The project partners with 14 customers across the United States. In fact some of the largest utility companies in the nation depend on GasDay to save millions of dollars every day. One customer, Pacific Gas and Electric, supplies 4.5 million gas customers in central and northern California. Another supplies the state of Oklahoma.
GasDay uses a software program developed by Dr. Ron Brown, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering, to predict natural gas usage. The program incorporates as much data as possible — historical weather reports, regional tendencies, holidays, population densities, etc. — into forecasting models for the various operating areas of a utility. (O’Connell’s New Mexico utility, for example, has 11 different operating areas.)
The utility companies internally update their data and run their forecasting models several times per day. They then regularly send the results to GasDay’s protected Web site on Marquette’s server. When GasDay receives the data, Brown’s students, many of whom are employed by the Gasday lab, analyze the data to ensure that each utility is forecasting its customers’ gas usage accurately.
“We had been using our own in-house forecasting model, which used weather reports to predict how much natural gas we would need,” says O’Connell of his company’s prior way of operating. “In 2005 our predictions were off because we had such a warm winter, so we decided that we needed a better model. GasDay is known for doing a great job because it takes a lot of factors into consideration — not just weather. It’s more accurate.”
Accuracy is key for a utility that needs to forecast how much natural gas its customers will use. “Our forecasting model ensures that we have plenty of gas supplies on hand so people can heat their homes,” O’Connell says.
From a financial standpoint, accuracy is paramount as well. “One CEO told me that he spends $60 million per year just pumping natural gas in and out of storage,” Brown says. With GasDay, a utility can predict usage up to eight days in advance and not spend money to store excess natural gas.
From neighborhood to nation
GasDay was started in 1993 with Wisconsin Gas (now WE Energies), located just a few blocks east of the Marquette campus in Milwaukee.
Wisconsin Gas contacted the then-dean of the College of Engineering seeking a better way to forecast natural gas usage. Brown’s area of expertise was in system identification — using models to find out what causes certain behaviors — so he was a good fit to help the utility. “I try to model how some characteristic responds over time. Back then I didn’t know anything about natural gas, but I knew how to look at systems and data to predict outcomes,” Brown says.
Since that fortuitous partnership Brown has transferred his passion for practical system identification to hundreds of Marquette students and faculty. And the opportunity to work for GasDay has attracted more than those who share engineering expertise.
It takes collaboration
Students from four colleges get involved — Engineering, Communication, Business Administration, and Arts and Sciences. “It’s fun to see engineering students and business students sit down together and collaborate because there’s always an initial period when they don’t really respect what the other side is doing,” Brown says. “Eventually, though, they come to appreciate each other, and they realize just how valuable they are to the success of GasDay.”
Steve Vitullo, a master’s student in electrical engineering, agrees: “It resembles a small business in that we have people from all over campus. Before I started working here, I had never worked with an M.B.A. student. But we need that kind of expertise as well because we’re running a business that we want to be profitable.”
GasDay is self-supported by the revenue it generates, which allows the lab to recruit outstanding students to participate in its work and research. “This is a research project that grew into a small business. The entire lab funds itself, including supporting product development and graduate student salaries,” Brown says.
Students from India, China, Tanzania and Jamaica have worked for GasDay within the past year. For most of them the experience represents their first American job.
“That’s why I feel so passionate about GasDay,” says Meng He, an electrical engineering graduate student from China who has worked in the lab since 2005. “When I first came here, I had to adjust to American culture. But when I leave Marquette, I will have succeeded in an American business. That’s such an important benefit for me.”
The pragmatic preparation that GasDay students glean in the lab is one of the reasons Brown thinks the project is so valuable. “I’m a little different in the fact that I’m an academic who comes out of industry,” Brown says. “I want to make sure that our students have the tools to thrive after they leave here.”
Focus on learning not earnings
GasDay saves utility companies millions of dollars and provides a valuable service, but it will always be much more than a business. “The value of GasDay for Marquette far exceeds licensing revenue: the student experience afforded by GasDay is priceless,” says Erik Thelen, executive director of research and sponsored programs, whose office oversees licensing.
That sentiment is a big reason why GasDay has not been commercialized like a private business. Although profitable, the project is not nearly as profitable as it could be. “Whenever we’re faced with the question of whether we’re a business or a university, we choose to be a university, and we take that very seriously,” says Dr. George Corliss, an electrical and computer engineering professor who collaborates with Brown to lead GasDay. “We could be a much better-run business if we just focused on making money.”
The focus is on learning. “Despite the fact that we’re sending data to customers on deadline — sometimes data that’s worth millions of dollars — the first priority for every student is their grades and academic progress,” Brown says.
But from the perspective of a customer, GasDay can hold its own with any small business in terms of professionalism and dependability. “We just really appreciate what we get out of the interaction with the people at Marquette,” says Jack Dunlap, an operations supervisor for Pacific Gas and Electric. “They’ve given us a forecasting model that has made everything much easier.”
O’Connell agrees — especially when his company is scrambling to battle unseasonably cold weather in New Mexico. “The people at GasDay seem to really care about our company, and they’ve come through for us when we’ve needed them most,” he says. “We’ve just started our partnership with them, but it looks like it will last for quite a while.”
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