Architects and Building Engineers flock to NREL

Eight busloads of architects and mechanical engineers toured one of the world’s largest net-zero-energy office building this summer at the Energy Department’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and came away inspired with new ideas for how to design and build beautiful, eco-friendly structures on a budget.

Tickets for the tours sold out almost as fast as a Paul McCartney concert, the busloads another reminder of how professionals are embracing high-performance, energy-efficient buildings.

The premier professional organizations for architects and building engineers — the American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) — both held their national conferences in Denver this summer, within a few days of each other.

Denver is just 14 miles from Golden, the site of NREL’s main campus and its Research Support Facility (RSF), a 360,000-square-foot office building that Construction Digital Magazine last year named the top net-zero-energy building in the world. A group of NREL engineers including Sheila Hayter, Rachel Romero, and Shanti Pless organized the trips to NREL’s campus — and led tours with help from the architects at RNL and SmithGroup JJR and the contractors from JE Dunn and Haselden, who worked with NREL to design and build the RSF and the new Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF).

Busloads of architects and mechanical engineers recently toured the Energy Systems Integration Facility. Here, they view the high performance computing data center, which will house one of the world’s most energy-efficient super computers. The petascale system will be dedicated to energy efficiency and renewable energy research.
Credit: SmithGroup JJR/Bill Timmerman

“People were lining up at will call to get tickets to the tour,” said Angela Innes, marketing manager for JE Dunn Construction, the main contractor on the ESIF project. “We saw huge interest and got a lot of feedback from architects from all over the world.”

The AIA architects and ASHRAE engineers marveled at the energy efficiency and the aesthetics of the RSF, and some dropped their jaws when they learned it was built in 2010 and 2011 for no more than the average square-foot cost — $259 — of other office buildings in the Denver area. In addition, the engineers saw that using biomass to heat buildings is a viable option for saving greenhouse gases and viewed one of the most energy-efficient data centers in the world.

NREL Shows High Performance is Economical
“Designers of commercial buildings are serious about creating energy-efficient buildings,” said NREL’s Hayter, who chairs ASHRAE’s Planning Committee, is a past ASHRAE vice president, and previously served on the steering committee that developed the original charter for ASHRAE’s Advanced Energy Design Guideline (AEDG) series that shows the way toward achieving 30% or 50% greater efficiency or net-zero energy.

“The architects visiting NREL were pretty amazed at the design of the RSF. They are anxious to learn how to make energy-efficient decisions with a very limited budget — without sacrificing aesthetics,” Pless said. A full-day pre-convention workshop at the AIA conference gave architects the chance to do exactly that: make design decisions with an eye for energy efficiency. The workshop taught them how to use OpenStudio, an Energy Department tool developed at NREL, to evaluate the energy impact of early design decisions such as orientation, massing, fenestration, construction assemblies, and internal building activity. They created baseline energy models and then made what-if alternatives using energy conservation measures pulled from the online Building Component Library, another Energy Department tool developed at NREL.

“We sent 200 of our people to NREL. It was all sold out,” said Nicolle Thompson, director of programs and sponsorship for AIA Colorado. “It was extremely popular. There are so many great projects at NREL, and many of our members participated in building that campus. The RSF and ESIF are getting such national recognition. It’s not easy to build a net-zero building of that size economically. We wanted to show it off.”

Asia Smart Building Market Growth set to Explode

Asia will consume 45% of world energy by 2030 and buildings are the big consumers. The unprecedented urbanization rate in Asia relies on smart buildings to reduce climate change impact. From a latest report published by BSRIA, the smart building market will grow from the current size of US$ 427 billion to US$ 1,036 billion in 2020, creating vast opportunities for advance building technologies and services.

Smart cities realize a sustainable urban development in many Asian countries. Smart cities are more focused on the ICT infrastructure but should also include eco, sustainable, green and low carbon cities, which address on various green elements.
Songdo IDB and Fujisawa are two smart cities under development in South Korea and Japan. China has 36 smart cities underway. Singapore will become a smart nation by 2015 and Iskandar is the flagship smart city in Malaysia. Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor will be the smart city of the future India. China is building a RMB 250 billion low carbon model city in Tianjin.

Smart cities create vast business opportunities for ICT, software, electronic hardware and low carbon industries. ICT and software companies are growing in the smart cities market now. System and service providers form partnership with the government and become a private investor.
Net zero energy building is more a concept than a hard target in most of the Asian countries except Japan. Net zero energy buildings usually used to demonstrate low carbon technologies.

Smart grid in developing countries is more important to upgrading the basic power grid infrastructure, while in developed countries it is about the grid communication system. It is more urgent for China and India to upgrade the power grid to accommodate the growing power demand. Different countries are at different development stages in smart grid. China government promised US$150bn to upgrade power grid in various aspects. Many other Asian countries governments also inject money in smart grid development. Electricity market in Asian countries is still monopolised and state-owned, except the fully deregulated market in Australia. Manual demand side management (DSM) has been used to solve power shortage problems in developing countries. Automatic demand response (AutoDM) is just starting in Asia but the existing market on DSM creates the business opportunities for AutoDM.

Buildings need to be integrated to smart city and smart grid in ICT, energy and low carbon aspects. Government, end user and building owner have different drivers for smart and green buildings. Smart buildings are growing in smart cities; green buildings are also the major trend in Asia in new building developments.

The latest BSRIA report identified six key trends in smart building design. Industry should not focus on the additional cost in smart buildings but should aim to provide suitable products and solution for smart buildings. The research also found some building systems have a significant increase in the construction budget compare to 5 years ago.
Outlook: Asia will take 43% of the global construction market by 2020 and China, India, Japan and Indonesia will be the biggest in the region. The Asian smart building market will reach US$1,036 billion in 2020, driven by the urbanization, smart cities and government commitment on carbon reduction.

New NREL building a ‘game-changer’ for U.S. renewable energy industry

The newest building at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden allows scientists and industry researchers to test what happens to the electricity grid when renewable energy is added into the mix.

Using electricity from wind and solar power plants is complicated because the amount of power generated varies with each gust of the wind, or passing cloud. As more and more power is produced from these resources, scientists and businesses are scrambling to figure out how the nation’s existing electric grid will cope.

And that’s where the new Energy Systems Integration Facility — better known as “ESIF” — comes into play.01a.NREL-Southwest-1-600

NREL officials have called the building, and the research that will be conducted there, a “game-changer” for the renewable energy industry.

The $135 million building’s mission is to support research by both the public and private sectors that’s aimed at updating the U.S. electrical power grid so it can handle more renewable energy. The electrical connections in the building will be capable of handling up to 1 megawatt of power, according to NREL officials.

U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Ernest Moniz on Wednesday dedicated the building, the first of its kind in the nation.

“Strong partnerships between our national laboratories and America’s private industry, academia and entrepreneurs will help reduce the effects of climate change, increase the production of clean energy and accelerate the development of new technologies,” Moniz said.

SOURCE: Denver Business Journal

Is Energy Storage Technology Truly Economical?

True or false: solar and wind power are freely available and clean, and thus should always be stored when they generate more energy than the grid can use? It’s easy to assume that renewable energy should never be turned off, but scientists at Stanford have done the math to find the break-even point where storing energy is better than “wasting,” or curtailing, that energy, and their findings aren’t necessarily as you’d think.

Though curtailing energy production results in an immediate energy loss, avoiding that loss through energy storage also requires an investment of energy, either through manufacturing batteries or building infrastructure. However, not all storage is the same, nor are the energy demands of creating wind and solar farms equivalent. By expressing all the energy in equivalent terms, the team could compare the return of energy garnered from solar and wind with the energy stored in batteries, per unit of energy required to build either (expressed as EROI for return of energy, and ESOI for the storage of energy).

utility-storage-cover

Because solar panels are more energetically expensive to produce than wind turbines, the EROI values differ by a factor of ten. When looking at various types of batteries, even more efficient flow batteries, all had much lower ESOI values than the geologic energy storage methods studied, which were compressed air energy storage and pumped hydroelectric storage.

Factoring in these differences, the study’s results show it’s currently always a better option to store solar energy because of the high energetic cost to recoup. However, the only storage options that are always better than curtailment of wind are geologic methods, with battery storage becoming better than curtailment depending on the fraction of energy being used in the grid instead of being stored or curtailed. In the graph below, you can read the ? in the bottom axis as representing that fraction. At the far right, if 100 percent of the energy is being curtailed or stored (i.e., none is going to the grid), then storing it is just barely a better option with any battery type. But at other rates it depends on the battery type.ll had much lower ESOI values than the geologic energy storage methods studied, which were compressed air energy storage and pumped hydroelectric storage.

It seems counter-intuitive that wind energy should be so cheap yet benefit in most cases from curtailment. But Michael Dale, one of the co-authors of the study, compared it to storing valuables in a safe. “You wouldn’t spend $100 on a safe to store a $10 watch,” he writes. In some situations it may even be preferable, in terms of energy expenditure, to build a new wind turbine rather than build storage for existing turbines.

The authors also make it plain that they’re condensing the question down to comparing one variable: the energetic trade-offs involved. But relying on economics alone avoids these considerations, and can even turn so-called green energy into the opposite. The authors calculated how much the life cycle of batteries would need to improve before becoming a viable option for wind – by a factor of two to 20, depending on the type of battery. But more importantly they also encourage the development of technologies that can use the otherwise curtailed energy in applications that aren’t harmed by being intermittent, such as systems to pump or purify water.

Sources: Stanford UniversityRoyal Society of Chemistry

 

Business Leaders Call for New Texas Building Code

A group of environmental advocates and business leaders is calling on Texas officials to adopt a new statewide energy building code, saying the move would slash air pollution and lower utility bills across the energy-guzzling state where the electric grid often strains to keep up.

In a letter sent Thursday to Texas Comptroller Susan Combs, the group, led by the Sierra Club, said Texas should adopt stricter energy standards for construction of new homes and commercial buildings. “Texas is at an energy crossroads and every kilowatt generated or saved is needed,” the letter said.

Less than two years after Texas last changed its building codes to comport with an international model, best practices for energy-efficient construction have evolved. Advocates for even stricter codes say adopting the latest model would save homeowners money and help Texas meet its ever-increasing demands for power. But some industry officials and the Texas comptroller’s office worry that too much change too rapidly will result in confusion and damage the industry.

The environmental group and business leaders want new standards that mirror the 2012 models developed by the International Code Council, a nonprofit group that gathers input from experts and public officials across the country. Bill Fay, head of the Washington, D.C.-based Energy Efficient Codes Coalition, said the models are a “gold standard” for energy efficiency.

Texas policymakers are struggling to answer questions about how they will keep energy flowing in the increasingly hot, dry state with its rapidly growing population and economy. In May 2012, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, operator of the grid that covers 75 percent of the state, reported that Texans face the possibility of rolling blackouts in the next decade, as the gap between its energy supply and demand narrows.

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Which U.S. Cities Rank High in Energy Efficiency?

While Congress dithers on energy efficiency, cities are moving ahead with energy-saving steps such as bike-sharing, tougher building codes, electric vehicle charging stations and cool roofs, says a study out Tuesday that ranks 34 major U.S. cities, According to USAToday.

Boston takes first place for its efforts to reduce energy use, followed by Portland, Ore., New York City, San Francisco, Seattle and Austin, according to the first-ever scorecard by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), a Washington-based research group.

What’s exciting is the quickening pace of these efforts, says lead author Eric Mackres. “Over the past five or so years, cities are rediscovering how important energy efficiency is to their economies,” he says, adding that federal Recovery Act funds helped them test potential solutions — some of which have since been adopted.

Capitol Hill is another story. Congress remains stalled on a bipartisan, cost-neutral bill that offers financial incentives, worker training, expert advice and other tools to help businesses adopt energy-efficient technologies. The bill passed a Senate committee earlier this year but is now stuck on the Senate floor, because lawmakers have attached controversial amendments that have nothing to do with energy efficiency.

“We may have to take the bill down,” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.,noting unrelated amendments including one by Sen. David Vitter, R-La., to weaken President Obama’s health care reform law. The bill’s authors, Sens. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.J., and Rob Portman, R-Ohio, had removed some provisions to avoid divisiveness, but acrimony ensued anyway.

Cities have picked up the slack. More are requiring buildings to disclose energy use so prospective renters can anticipate utility costs, helping low-income households make efficiency retrofits so they save money and toughening building codes so less energy is used.

More than a dozen cities have launched bike-sharing programs and about two dozen — including Atlanta, Houston and San Antonio — have installed EV charging stations in public areas. New York City, Houston and Chicago have each launched programs to plant 1 million trees citywide. At least 10 — including Dallas, Miami and Philadelphia — have policies to promote or require “cool roofs” to reduce how much solar heat a building absorbs.

The ACEEE scored the cities for their efforts in five areas: buildings, transportation, energy and water utility programs, local government operations and community-wide initiatives. While Boston got the highest overall score of 77, out of a maximum 100, Portland did best in transportation, Seattle in building policies and San Francisco (along with Boston) in utility benefit programs.

In its Renew Boston effort, Boston has partnered with investor-owned utilities to tell consumers about rate-payer financed incentives for buying energy-efficient appliances and making energy-saving retrofits.

“Environmental development goes hand in hand with economic development,” Boston Mayor Thomas Menino said at a press briefing on the scorecard. He says both benefit city residents, although officials need to learn “street” rather than “scientific” talk to help them understand how.

“Both business and the public are with us,” Portland Mayor Charlie Hales told reporters, adding they realize that energy efficiency is good for the environment as well as the bottom line.

The second-highest-scoring tier of cities, earning between 53 and 56 points, includes Washington, D.C., Minneapolis, Chicago, Philadelphia and Denver. The lowest-scoring cities were Detroit (19 points) and Jacksonville (17 points).

“All cities, even the highest scorers, have significant room for improvement,” the report says. Mackres says it ranked cities on their efforts rather than actual energy use, because data on the latter is incomplete and climate differences can affect how much energy cities use.

How U.S. cities rank on energy efficiency efforts

Rank..City……….Total score (Maximum 100)
1……Boston, MA…………….76.75
2……Portland,OR………….70.00
3……New York City………..69.75
3…..San Francisco, CA…. 69.75
5…..Seattle, WA…………… 65.25
6.. ..Austin, TX……………… 62.00
7…..Washington, DC…….56.00
8…..Minneapolis, MN……..55.25
9…..Chicago, IL………………54.75
10..Philadelphia, PA……. 54.50
11..Denver, CO……………. 52.75
12..Baltimore, MD…………46.50
13.Houston, TX……………. 45.25
14..Dallas, TX……………….44.25
15..Phoenix, AZ…………….43.50
16..Atlanta, GA…………….. 42.50
16..San Antonio, TX…….. 42.50
18..Sacramento, CA……. 40.75
19..Columbus, OH……… .38.50
20..San Diego, CA……….. 38.25
21..Riverside, CA…………. 37.25
21..San Jose, CA…………. 37.25
23..El Paso, TX……………. .36.25
23..St. Louis, MO……………36.25
25.. Pittsburgh, PA………. .34.25
26.. Fort Worth, TX………. .32.75
27.. Miami, FL……………… .32.00
28.. Los Angeles, CA……. 31.50
29.. Indianapolis, IN…….. .28.25
30.. Tampa, FL…………….. .26.75
31..Charlotte, NC…………. .23.75
32..Memphis, TN……………23.50
33..Detroit, MI………………. .19.00
34.. Jacksonville, FL………17.25

White House Returning to Solar Panels

Back in 2010, former Energy Secretary Steven Chu said that the administration would install between 20 and 50 solar panels. Despite the pledge, however, the White House did not respond to offers for free solar photovoltaic systems from companies such as Sungevity. Now, in 2013, President Obama has found new resolve to discuss climate change and a more resilient energy landscape.

Obama is now taking that message back to his own home, installing solar PV as “part of an energy retrofit that will improve the overall energy efficiency of the building,” a White House official told the Washington Post.

Although the panels are already being installed, there is no word yet on the final panel count or the total energy output. President Obama has pledged that 20 percent of the federal government’s energy use will be powered by renewables by 2020.

Chicopee Receives $185,000 for Environment Friendly Building Practices

By constructing the new senior center with passive solar energy, the most efficient lighting and plenty of insulation, the city received a check for $185,280 from Chicopee Electric Light. The contribution, which is being granted through rebates, will count toward the $2 million the Friends of the Chicopee Senior Center has promised to raise toward construction of the building. It was announced during a gathering with the building commission and officials from the state Department of Energy Resources. Read More

Green Buildings Could Be Half US Construction And Worth $248 Billion By 2016

green cityGreen building is growing fast in the US, and may represent more than half of all commercial and institutional construction as soon as 2016.

A new report from the US Green Building Council (USGBC), LEED in Motion: People and Progress, details green building’s exponential growth and outlines both the value of the industry and its reach into American lives.

The report is the first of three LEED in Motion summaries planned for release in 2013, and it reveals yet another key indictor that sustainability can be as much an economic boost as an environmental one.

Renewables industry reacts angrily to ‘watered down’ green housing standards

The global renewable energy industry has reacted angrily to the government’s proposals to water down green commitments for new-build properties.  The government is proposing to scrap the 2008 Planning and Energy Act which gave local authorities the freedom to set their own carbon, renewables and energy efficiency targets for new-build properties.

The latest Housing Standards review issued by the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) notes that “it is no longer appropriate for local plan policies to specify additional standards for how much of the energy use from homes should come from on-site renewables”.

The document continues: “The government considers that with this proposed new approach, it will need to consider the role of the Planning and Energy Act 2008…the government considers that the Act may need to be amended or removed.”

The renewables industry had already expressed frustration at the recently updated Building Regulations which weakened carbon reduction targets and, even in DCLG’s eyes, failed to sufficiently incentivise on-site renewables. The proposal to remove the Planning and Energy Act will therefore remove local authorities’ only tool to incentivise the take up of on-site renewables.

REA chief executive Dr Nina Skorupska explained: “How can a government claiming to support both localism and renewable energy suggest doing away with the only policy tool that enables local authorities to promote the use of renewables in new housing?

“It is cheaper to install renewables during construction rather than retrofit, and doing so means the occupants can benefit from lower energy bills from day one. The government should be seeking to future proof new housing against rising energy prices and make it fit for the 21st century.”