People

Richard Raustad
Program Director
Buildings Research

(321) 638-1454
rraustad@fsec.ucf.edu

Education:

B.S. Electronic Engineering
University of Central Florida, Orlando FL 1988

Research Focus:

Mr. Raustad is Program Director of U.S. DOT's Electric Vehicle Transportation Center. The EVTC is a consortium of transportation and energy experts from the University of Central Florida (UCF), University of Hawai'i, and Tuskegee University in Alabama. It is led by UCF's Florida Solar Energy Center (FSEC). The EVTC program will also employ a collaborative working group of industry professionals, utility representatives, manufacturers and national labs and agencies to assist in program development for the purpose of accelerating EV acceptance and adoption. Area's of research will include the building electrical system pertaining to the charging of electric vehicle batteries and impacts EV charging stations have on building energy use, use of bi-directional converters to draw energy from the EV battery and provide that energy to the building, and how consumers might connect an electric vehicle to residences to provide emergency backup power or use the vehicle battery as the primary energy storage medium in a home PV system.

Mr. Raustad is also writing software modules to include in DOE's EnergyPlus simulation engine. DOE's EnergyPlus software is a building energy simulation engine which provides detailed computation of moisture and heat transport for building materials, interaction of Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning, and Refrigeration (HVACR) equipment on the indoor environment, and calculations of energy use for all equipment associated with the simulated building.

For over two decades, Mr. Raustad's areas of research have included heat pipe-assisted air conditioning, thermal energy storage systems, desiccant-enhanced air conditioning, enthalpy recovery wheels, packaged terminal air conditioning, HVAC equipment performance, alternate HVAC control strategies, and building automation systems.