UCLA’s Cogeneration plant supplies the main campus with electricity, steam for heating, and chilled water for cooling. Given the need to balance the generation of these products, it is important for the plant operators to be able to predict the campus day-to-day demands for heating and cooling. This need is supported with weather forecasts that UCLA Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences (AOS) provides.
AOS has a weather station that is located centrally on campus, on the roof of Mathematical Sciences building. AOS' very own weatherman, James Murakami, processes the localized weather data from this station to generate the weather forecasts that the plant uses for their own utilities’ generation planning.
In 2023, after many long years of service, AOS' weather station finally ceased to function. This equipment failure presented an excellent opportunity for various departments and services on campus to come together and to realize a solution.
The new weather station is a research-grade weather station that provides professional-grade data. With AOS installing this new weather station, the Electrical Shop was called into service to provide a new weatherproof power outlet to meet the weather station’s requirement. With a new device set up, the IT department worked to ensure the weather station can securely connect to the campus network and provides its live weather data to AOS.
Working in a higher education institution like UCLA, the phrase "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts" surely applies many times over. This occasion presents another one of those times where the seemingly routine work does make a significant difference in facilitating campus mission.
For those have interested in Westwood weather, you can find AOS' live weather data here: https://www.weatherlink.com/embeddablePage/show/16ecc131aab345939f53a128294eb3ae/summary
And AOS' weather synopsis containing 5-day forecast can be found here: https://atmos.ucla.edu/category/weather-synopsis/
