Heidi von Korff

Stanford University | SU · Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Energy efficiency in residential construction has accelerated over the last decade. Efficiency is “by design” using simulation programs, but long-term performance-data to evaluate performance of design tools is missing because of the difficulty and expense of monitoring needed volumes of different homes and their designs. The current initiative, le...

Solar power electric generating facilities strike a much lower environmental footprint compared to fossil-based facilities. When coupled with reduced non-renewable fuel demands, this lower footprint makes construction of solar energy sources an attractive, more sustainable source of electric power. However, as part of a sustainability-focused marke...

California has adopted numerous policies to reduce energy use from the building sector including the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC)’s Long-Term Energy Efficiency Strategic Plan, which calls for all new residential construction and all new commercial construction in California to be zero-net energy (ZNE) by 2020 and 2030, respectively...

The economic return on investment of a commercial photovoltaic system depends greatly on its performance over the long term and, hence, its degradation rate. Many methods have been proposed for assessing system degradation rates from outdoor performance data. However, comparing reported values from one analyst and research group to another requires...

The increasing amount of distributed energy resources (DER) is changing the structure of the energy system, as the location and ownership of the energy resources will be increasingly distributed. As the generation is becoming more intermittent (wind and solar), it calls for solutions to harvest flexibility also from small sources within customer pr...

Twenty-first century technology is driving profound changes in the electric utility business model. At the same time, the threat of global climate change necessitates the adoption of these technologies. California and the Netherlands have been at the forefront of the adoption of solar generation and energy storage, and, for this reason, these two r...

Background/Question/Methods As land development changes our built environment and human well-being is increasing with economic development, there are losses to natural resources, such as degradation appearing in ecosystem services. A technique to quantify the economic value of land and water assets, particularly water treatment in a predictive me...