Jose Bolorinos
Postdoctoral Scholar, Civil and Environmental Engineering
Bio
Jose Bolorinos is a Postdoctoral scholar in Civil and Environmental Engineering. Jose received his PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering (Atmosphere & Energy) and an M.S. in Statistics at Stanford. Jose's research focuses on data-driven, systems-level strategies for coordinating urban water and energy supply infrastructure. As part of this work, he has investigated policy approaches that better understand and manage the lifecycle impacts of the energy sector on watersheds, air quality, and carbon emissions. Jose has also developed closed-loop customer monitoring and segmentation tools that allow water and electricity utilities to quickly track the responses of their customers to demand shocks inside and outside of their service areas. Currently, he is developing data-driven methods for optimal design and operation of energy storage in the wastewater treatment sector. His work has been featured at the California Data Collaborative, Stanford's Big Earth Water Hackathon, and AI for Climate Change Initiative.
Prior to coming to Stanford, Jose worked as a data scientist for a healthcare consultancy subcontracted by the federal government to manage its Medicare and Medicaid claims databases. Jose received a B.A. in Economics from UC Berkeley and an M.S. in Environmental Engineering and Science from Stanford University. He was part of the start up operations team at the Bill & Cloy Resource Recovery Center, an experimental, pilot-scale wastewater treatment facility launched recently on the Stanford campus to accelerate innovative approaches to wastewater treatment.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3741-5483All Publications
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Integrated Energy Flexibility Management at Wastewater Treatment Facilities.
Environmental science & technology
2023
Abstract
On-site batteries, low-pressure biogas storage, and wastewater storage could position wastewater resource recovery facilities as a widespread source of industrial energy demand flexibility. This work introduces a digital twin method that simulates the coordinated operation of current and future energy flexibility resources. We combine process models and statistical learning on 15 min resolution sensor data to construct a facility's energy and water flows. We then value energy flexibility interventions and use an iterative search algorithm to optimize energy flexibility upgrades. Results from a California facility with anaerobic sludge digestion and biogas cogeneration predict a 17% reduction in electricity bills and an annualized 3% return on investment. A national analysis suggests substantial benefit from using existing flexibility resources, such as wet-weather storage, to reduce electricity bills but finds that new energy flexibility investments are much less profitable in electricity markets without time-of-use incentives and plants without existing cogeneration facilities. Profitability of a range of energy flexibility interventions may increase as a larger number of utilities place a premium on energy flexibility, and cogeneration is more widely adopted. Our findings suggest that policies are needed to incentivize the sector's energy flexibility and provide subsidized lending to finance it.
View details for DOI 10.1021/acs.est.3c00365
View details for PubMedID 37327453
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Do water savings persist? Using survival models to plan for long-term responses to extreme drought
ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH LETTERS
2022; 17 (9)
View details for DOI 10.1088/1748-9326/ac8b22
View details for Web of Science ID 000850676800001
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Global Changes in Electricity Consumption During COVID-19.
iScience
2021: 103568
Abstract
Understanding how the COVID-19 pandemic has altered electricity consumption can provide insights into society's responses to future shocks and other extreme events. We quantify changes in electricity consumption in 58 different countries/regions around the world from January-October 2020, and examine how those changes relate to government restrictions, health outcomes, GDP, mobility metrics, and electricity sector characteristics in different countries. We cluster the timeseries of electricity consumption changes to identify impact groupings that capture systematic differences in timing, depth of initial changes and recovery rate, revealing substantial heterogeneity. Results show that stricter government restrictions and larger decreases in mobility (particularly retail and recreation) are most tightly linked to decreases in electricity consumption, though these relationships are strongest during the initial phase of the pandemic. We find indications that decreases in electricity consumption relate to pre-pandemic sensitivity to holidays, suggesting a new direction for future research.
View details for DOI 10.1016/j.isci.2021.103568
View details for PubMedID 34877481
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Use of trihalomethanes as a surrogate for haloacetonitrile exposure introduces misclassification bias.
Water research X
2021; 11: 100089
Abstract
Epidemiologists have used trihalomethanes (THMs) as a surrogate for overall disinfection byproduct (DBP) exposure based on the assumption that THM concentrations are proportional to concentrations of other DBP classes. Toxicological evidence indicates THMs are less potent toxins than unregulated classes like haloacetonitriles (HANs). If THMs are not proportional to the DBPs driving toxicity, the use of THMs to measure exposure may introduce non-trivial exposure misclassification bias in epidemiologic studies. This study developed statistical models to evaluate the covariance and proportionality of HAN and THM concentrations in a dataset featuring over 9500 measurements from 248 public water systems. THMs only explain 30% of the variance in HANs, whether the data is pooled in a classic linear regression or hierarchically grouped by water system in a multilevel linear regression. The 95% prediction interval on HANs for the median THM concentration exceeds the interquartile range of HANs. Mean HAN:THM ratios range from 2.4% to 80% across water systems, and varied with source water category, season, disinfectant sequence and distribution system location. The HAN:THM ratio was 265% higher in groundwater systems than in surface water systems and declined by 40% between finished effluent and maximum residence times in surface water systems with chlorine-chlorine disinfection. A maximum likelihood approach was used to estimate the misclassification bias that may result from using THMs to construct risk-ratios, assuming that HANs represent the "true" DBP exposure risk. The results indicate an odds ratio of 2 estimated with THM concentrations could correspond to a true odds ratio of 4-5. These findings demonstrate the need for epidemiologic studies to evaluate exposure by measuring DBPs that are likely to drive toxicity.
View details for DOI 10.1016/j.wroa.2021.100089
View details for PubMedID 33554102
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Mining the gap in long-term residential water and electricity conservation
ENVIRONMENTAL RESEARCH LETTERS
2021; 16 (2)
View details for DOI 10.1088/1748-9326/abbfc2
View details for Web of Science ID 000608869600001
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Consumption change detection for urban planning: monitoring and segmenting water customers during drought
Water Resources Research
2020; 56 (3)
View details for DOI 10.1029/2019WR025812
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Evaluating Environmental Governance along Cross-Border Electricity Supply Chains with Policy-Informed Life Cycle Assessment: The California-Mexico Energy Exchange.
Environmental science & technology
2018
Abstract
This paper presents a "policy-informed" life cycle assessment of a cross-border electricity supply chain that links the impact of each unit process to its governing policy framework. An assessment method is developed and applied to the California-Mexico energy exchange as a unique case study. CO2-equivalent emissions impacts, water withdrawals, and air quality impacts associated with California's imports of electricity from Mexican combined-cycle facilities fueled by natural gas from the U.S. Southwest are estimated, and U.S. and Mexican state and federal environmental regulations are examined to assess well-to-wire consistency of energy policies. Results indicate most of the water withdrawn per kWh exported to California occurs in Baja California, most of the air quality impacts accrue in the U.S. Southwest, and emissions of CO2-equivalents are more evenly divided between the two regions. California energy policy design addresses generation-phase CO2 emissions, but not upstream CO2-eq emissions of methane during the fuel cycle. Water and air quality impacts are not regulated consistently due to varying U.S. state policies and a lack of stringent federal regulation of unconventional gas development. Considering local impacts and the regulatory context where they occur provides essential qualitative information for functional-unit-based measures of life cycle impact and is necessary for a more complete environmental impact assessment.
View details for PubMedID 29630347
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Balancing marine ecosystem impact and freshwater consumption with water-use fees in California’s power markets: An evaluation of possibilities and trade-offs
Balancing marine ecosystem impact and freshwater consumption with water-use fees in California’s power markets: An evaluation of possibilities and trade-offs
2018; 226 (C): 644-654
View details for DOI 10.1016/j.apenergy.2018.06.028