Photo of Gregory Pavlak

Gregory Pavlak

Associate Professor

Affiliation(s):

  • Architectural Engineering
  • Institutes of Energy and Environment

225 Engineering Unit A

gxp93@psu.edu

814-867-3323

Research Website

Research Areas:

Building Mechanical Systems

Interest Areas:

Smart building systems, building-to-grid integration, distributed and renewable energy

 
 

 

Education

  • B.S., Engineering (Mechanical), Hope College, 2009
  • Ph.D., Architectural Engineering, University of Colorado Boulder, 2014

Publications

Journal Articles

  • Fatih Topak, Gregory Pavlak, Mehmet Koray PekeriƧli, Julian Wang and Farrokh Jazizadeh, 2023, "Collective comfort optimization in multi-occupancy environments by leveraging personal comfort models and thermal distribution patterns", Building and Environment, 239, (July), pp. 110401
  • Lily Li and Gregory Pavlak, 2023, "Analyzing harmony and discord among optimal building controllers responding to energy, cost, and carbon reduction objectives", ASME Journal of Engineering for Sustainable Buildings and Cities, pp. 011002
  • Amin Sepehri and Gregory Pavlak, 2023, "Evaluating optimal control of active insulation and HVAC systems in residential buildings", Energy and Buildings, 281, pp. 112728
  • Min Gyung Yu and Gregory Pavlak, 2023, "Risk-aware sizing and transactive control of building portfolios with thermal energy storage", Applied Energy, 332, pp. 120474
  • Abdullah Almasad, Gregory Pavlak, Thamer Alquthami and Soundar R Tirupatikumara, 2023, "Site suitability analysis for implementing solar PV power plants using GIS and fuzzy MCDM based approach", Solar Energy, 249, pp. 642-650
  • Min Gyung Yu and Gregory Pavlak, 2022, "Quantifying the value of stochastic supervisory controller for building thermal energy storage aggregators in two-settlement grid markets", Journal of Engineering for Sustainable Buildings and Cities, 3, (3), pp. 031002
  • Amy Allen, Gregor Henze, Kyri Baker, Gregory Pavlak and Michael Murphy, 2022, "An optimization framework for the network design of advanced district thermal energy systems", Energy Conversion and Management, 266, (2022), pp. 115839
  • Min Gyung Yu, Gregory Pavlak and Vinayak Shanbhag, 2022, "Uncertainty-aware optimal dispatch of building thermal storage portfolios via smoothed variance-reduced accelerated gradient methods", Journal of Energy Storage, pp. 104405
  • Shadi M Abdel Haleem, Gregory Pavlak and William P Bahnfleth, 2022, "Model-based testbed for uncertainty quantification in building control systems with advanced sequences of operation", Journal of Architectural Engineering, pp. 04022007
  • Min Yu and Gregory Pavlak, 2022, "Extracting interpretable building control rules from multi-objective model predictive control data sets", Energy, pp. 122691
  • Shadi M Abdel Haleem, Gregory Pavlak and William P Bahnfleth, 2021, "Impact of control loop performance on energy use, air quality, and thermal comfort in building systems with advanced sequences of operation", Automation in Construction, 130, pp. 103837
  • Min Yu and Gregory Pavlak, 2021, "Assessing the performance of uncertainty-aware transactive controls for building thermal energy storage systems", Applied Energy, 282, Part B, pp. 116103
  • Amy Allen, Gregor P Henze, Kyri Baker and Gregory Pavlak, 2020, "Evaluation of low-exergy heating and cooling systems and topology optimization for deep energy savings at the urban district level", Energy Conversion and Management, 222, pp. 113106
  • Siddharth Swaminathan, Gregory Pavlak and James Freihaut, 2020, "Sizing and dispatch of an islanded microgrid with energy flexible buildings", Applied Energy, 276, pp. 115355
  • Shadi M. Abdel Haleem, Gregory Pavlak and William P Bahnfleth, 2020, "Performance of advanced control sequences in handling uncertainty in energy use and indoor environmental quality using uncertainty and sensitivity analysis for control components", Energy and Buildings, 225, pp. 110308
  • Christina Turley, Margarite Jacoby, Gregory Pavlak and Gregor Henze, 2020, "Development and evaluation of occupancy-aware HVAC control for residential building energy efficiency and occupant comfort", Energies, pp. 5396
  • Hyeunguk Ahn, Donghyun Rim, Gregory Pavlak and James Freihaut, 2019, "Uncertainty analysis of energy and economic performances of hybrid solar photovoltaic and combined cooling, heating, and power (CCHP+PV) systems using a Monte-Carlo method", Applied Energy, 255, pp. 113753
  • Gregory Pavlak, Gregor P. Henze, Adam I. Hirsch, Anthony R. Florita and Robert H. Dodier, 2016, "Experimental verification of an energy consumption signal tool for operational decision support in an office building", Automation in Construction, 72, pp. 75-92
  • Gregory Pavlak, Gregor P. Henze and Vincent J. Cushing, 2015, "Evaluating synergistic effect of optimally controlling commercial building thermal mass portfolios", Energy, 84, pp. 161-176
  • Gregor P. Henze, Gregory Pavlak, Anthony R. Florita, Robert H. Dodier and Adam I. Hirsch, 2015, "An energy signal tool for decision support in building energy systems", Applied Energy, 138, pp. 51-70
  • Gregory Pavlak, Gregor P. Henze and Vincent J. Cushing, 2014, "Optimizing commercial building participation in energy and ancillary service markets", Energy and Buildings, 81, pp. 115-126
  • Gregory Pavlak, Anthony R. Florita, Gregor P. Henze and Balaji Rajagopalan, 2014, "Comparison of traditional and Bayesian calibration techniques for gray-box modeling", Journal of Architectural Engineering, 20, (2), pp. 04013011

Conference Proceedings

  • Fatih Topak, Gregory Pavlak, Mehmet Koray PekeriƧli and Julian Wang, 2023, "Analysis of thermal distribution patterns in multi-occupancy environments", pp. 8
  • Sam Mottahedi and Gregory Pavlak, 2022, "Constrained differentiable cross-entropy method for safe model-based reinforcement learning", ACM BuildSys 2022, pp. 9
  • Behzad Rizi, Mohammad Heidarinejad, Gregory Pavlak, Vincent Cushing and William Hederman, 2022, "Evaluating the performance of chiller plant efficiency using random forest model: a high-rise building case study", 2022 Building Performance Analysis Conference and SimBuild, pp. 234-242
  • Laura Hinkle, Gregory Pavlak, Nathan Bro andn, Leland , 2022, "Dynamic subset sensitivity analysis for design exploration", ANNSim 2022, pp. 12
  • Amin Sepehri and Gregory Pavlak, 2022, "Joint optimization of HVAC and active insulation control strategies in residential buildings", 2022 ASHRAE Annual Conference - Toronto, pp. 8
  • Amy Allen, Gregor Henze, Kyri Baker and Gregory Pavlak, 2021, "Demonstration of the value of network topology optimization for advanced district thermal energy systems", SDEWES2021, pp. 1-18
  • Xinyi Li and Gregory Pavlak, 2021, "Pattern analysis of dynamic grid incentives and the implications on optimal control of building thermal energy storage", 2020ne High Performance Buildings Conference, pp. 10
  • Min Yu and Gregory Pavlak, 2021, "Assessing the value of uncertainty-aware transactive control framework for commercial and residential buildings", International High Performance Buildings Conference, pp. 10
  • Amy Allen, Gregor Henze, Kyri Baker, Gregory Pavlak and Michael Murphy, 2021, "Evaluation of topology optimization to achieve energy savings at the urban district level", pp. 10
  • Chrissa Turley, Margarite Jacoby, Gregor Henze and Gregory Pavlak, 2020, "Development and evaluation of occupancy-aware model predictive control for residential building energy efficiency and occupant comfort", IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, 588, pp. 022043
  • Amy Allen, Gregor Henze, Kyri Baker, Gregory Pavlak, Nicholas Long and Yangyang Fu, 2020, "A topology optimization framework to facilitate adoption of advanced district thermal energy systems", IOP Conference Series: Earth and Environmental Science, 588, pp. 022054
  • Lily Li, Donghyun Rim and Gregory Pavlak, 2020, "A review on current passive house performance and potentials in different climate zones", Indoor Air 2020, pp. 2
  • Min Gyung Yu and Gregory Pavlak, 2020, "Two-stage stochastic planning for control of building thermal energy storage portfolios with transactive controls", 2020 American Control Conference, pp. 2339-2344
  • Javad Khazaei, Gregory Pavlak, Brandon Lee and Mohamed Elsenbaty, 2018, "A novel application of modular multi-level converters for partially shaded PV systems", IEEE Texas Power and Energy Conference, pp. 1-6
  • Gregory Pavlak, Anthony R. Florita, Gregor P. Henze and Balaji Rajagopalan, 2013, "Probabilistic identification of inverse building model parameters", American Society of Civil Engineers, pp. 255-264
  • Amy Allen, Gregor Henze, Kyri Baker and Gregory Pavlak, , "Analysis of HVAC systems for deep energy savings at the urban district level", 14th Conference on Sustainable Development of Energy, Water, and Environment Systems, pp. 1-28

Research Projects

  • May 2019 - April 2021, "Uncertainty-Aware Transactive Building Controls," (Sponsor: Penn State Institutes of Energy and the Environment).
  • January 2020 - December 2021, "STTR: Phase II: Peer-to-Peer Energy Transactions with Advanced Demand Flexibility for Increasing Solar Energy Utilization," (Sponsor: QCoefficient, Inc. ^).
  • August 2018 - May 2019, "STTR: Peer-to-Peer Energy Transactions with Advanced Demand Flexibility for Increasing Solar Energy Utilization," (Sponsor: QCoefficient, Inc. ^).

Honors and Awards

  • Best Paper Award: SimAUD 2022, Society for Modeling & Simulation International, July 2022
  • 2022 IBPSA-USA Emerging Contributor Award, International Building Performance Simulation Association-USA, September 2022
  • Best Paper Award: AEI 2013, Architectural Engineering Institute, April 2013

Service

Service to Penn State:

  • Committee Work, Co-Chairperson, Council Co-Chair, College of Engineering Sustainability Council, August 2022
  • Committee Work, Representative, Architectural Engineering Department Representative, College of Engineering Research Computing Committee, February 2018 - August 2019

Service to External Organizations:

  • Participation in or Service to Professional and Learned Societies, Other, Smart Grid Subcommittee Chair, Technical Committee 7.5 - Smart Building Systems, ASHRAE, July 2022
  • Participation in or Service to Professional and Learned Societies, Other, Handbook Subcommittee Chair, Technical Committee 7.5 - Smart Building Systems, ASHRAE, July 2021
  • Participation in or Service to Professional and Learned Societies, Other, Provisional Corresponding Member, Technical Committee 1.4 - Control Theory and Application, ASHRAE, January 2018
  • Participation in or Service to Professional and Learned Societies, Other, Handbook Subcommittee Co-Chair, Technical Committee 7.5 - Smart Building Systems, ASHRAE, July 2018 - June 2021