Schinnerer's RM Blog - energy tag

Study of MIT Buildings Suggests Additional Approaches to Energy Efficiency

Tue, 10 Apr 2012 12:11:00 GMT

Colleges and universities are notorious for inefficiency in energy use. A recent study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology of two MIT buildings can assist both other educational institutions and other types of facility owners in reducing energy use through planning and scheduling. Titled “ENERNET: Studying the dynamic relationship between building occupancy and energy consumption,” the paper deals with the significant issue of matching building and equipment schedules with dynamic occupancy patterns.

Many workplaces feature major changes in occupancy over the course of a day or throughout the week. As a result, energy use tends to be inefficient—too large or too small—in relation to the use pattern.

The MIT study reveals some data that could help designers and building managers, on campuses or in the commercial sector, optimize energy usage. It also sets the stage for more research on the subject. The study, published in the April issue of the Energy and Buildings journal, finds that while electricity use corresponds to occupancy fairly well in those spaces, the activity of heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems in the buildings does not correlate closely to occupancy.

The researchers analyzed two very different kinds of buildings—one housing researchers in a combination of offices, classrooms, and labs, and the other a stand-alone classroom building with a sizable entrance atrium and a large number of offices inside. The study used data about Wi-Fi connections as a proxy for building occupancy, a method the researchers believe could be replicated elsewhere at low cost; while the data does not necessarily reveal an exact population count inside buildings, it does indicate relative occupancy levels over time.

Analyzing data from all four seasons of 2006, the researchers found that both buildings have a distinctive cyclical “signature” of electricity usage that rises and falls daily. Both buildings use more steam (for heat) in winter and spring, and more chilled water (for air conditioning) in summer and fall. But while about two-thirds of the variation in electricity levels can be accounted for by changing occupancy levels, the use of the HVAC systems correlated only weakly to occupancy. These MIT buildings tended to be heated or cooled according to the season but not in a way that optimized the use of energy.

The researchers, part of MIT’s SENSEable City Lab, noted that part of the variance between occupancy and energy use may derive from the special needs of academic buildings, which often house labs with around-the-clock heating or refrigeration demands.

There are many possible architectural or engineering solutions to this issue. Co-author of the study, Carlo Ratti, notes “You can move the people to the energy, in which case the architecture can help a lot, or you can move the energy to the people, which is more futuristic.” The larger point, he says, is that “you want to have a better match.”

The study suggested possible design-based solutions including:

rearranging plans so that heat from larger, less used spaces can seep into more rooms
using sensing based thermometers that regulate temperatures on a more granular basis within buildings,according to the number of people
repurposing large spaces for more intensive and improved use

One Pig's Waste is Another Man's Gold

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:08:00 GMT

As the construction market continues to stagnate due to decreased funding from government entities, it’s clearer that private investment is becoming increasingly important to spur growth and innovation. One such example of this is a new waste-to-energy system developed on a pig farm in North Carolina.

The $1.2 million project was financed, designed, and built by Duke University, Duke Energy, and Google, which has one of its many data centers nearby. Before the project, Loyd Bryant used to pump the pig waste into a lagoon on his property, and you can only imagine the stench that caused. The waste can’t be used for fertilizer since the nitrogen content is too high.

As noted by McGraw-Hill’s GreenSource blog: “the new waste-processing system -- it's basically a small power plant -- installed on his [Bryant’s] 154-acre farm uses bacteria to digest the waste and burns methane to produce electricity. It also converts toxic ammonia into forms of nitrogen that can be used as fertilizer for more profitable crops.” Duke claims that this new system is one of the cleanest of its kind in that all of the pig waste is converted into some useful byproduct.

All of the parties involved benefit in some way, whether it’s Bryant by saving on his electricity costs and expanding his farm to produce corn, wheat and beans, Duke Energy by earning renewable energy credits, and the university and Google earning carbon offset credits.

Unlike similar projects that use expensive parts and expensive designs, “the system was built with off-the-shelf parts and simple designs that are free for the asking. It's poised to become the standard for a cleaner waste-to-energy model that brings together farmers, utilities and private firms in an environmentally friendly effort.”

Fort Bliss Invests in Energy Efficiency

Thu, 05 Jan 2012 13:32:00 GMT

While Congress keeps wavering on the need to invest in infrastructure improvements to reduce energy usage, many military units are tapping creative solutions to answer the Obama administration’s call for improvements to save energy and create job opportunities in the private sector.

Fort Bliss, an army base about the size of the state of Rhode Island, is outside of El Paso, Texas. It created a forward-looking energy reduction program in 2009 with the goal of becoming the Army’s leadership center for renewable energy. Its vision of energy security has been focused not only on energy conservation and management efforts, but also on renewable resources such as geothermal, solar, wind, and other “off-the-grid” power sources. Recently it signed a $16 million energy efficiency contract with Johnson Controls. The energy savings performance contract will pay for improvements over a 24-year period with savings on electricity and other utility bills. The project includes the installation of 5,500 solar panels at no cost to the Army. With 330 days of sunshine on average, the El Paso area is a prime location for solar installations. In addition to the panels, daylighting solar “light pipes” are being installed to illuminate building interiors.

The base, which is envisioned as the base to around 34,000 troops and their families, has the goal of being “net zero” in energy consumption by 2015.

Researchers Turn Wastewater into Source of Hydrogen

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 15:28:00 GMT

The search for sustainable fuel sources to transition us away from finite fossil fuels continues, as researchers from Penn State have developed a way to produce hydrogen while using no grid electricity. Hydrogen as a fuel source is one of the best bets to become one of the new fuel alternatives. But in the past, it has taken energy generated by fossil fuels to manufacture hydrogen. The new method involves extracting energy from the ionic differences between salt water and fresh water; enough energy to generate hydrogen from organic material. The process requires only seawater and river water and biodegradable organic matter (wastewater), so supplies are essentially limitless.

Beautifying Electric Towers

Thu, 02 Jun 2011 15:18:00 GMT

The Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA)—a professional body for architects in the United Kingdom—has decided to do something about the eyesores created by the distribution of electricity in the UK. The steel lattice design of the electrical towers has not really changed since 1927. Some feel the towers, which are spread across many otherwise pleasant fields and valleys, spoil the visual appeal of the landscape. So RIBA is running a competition seeking creative designs to make the towers more visually appealing.

The UK will need to add many new power stations in the next ten years, and not all locations will be viable spots for underground electricity distribution. Running cables underground costs much more than using electricity pylons (as the towers are called in the UK). Therefore, more pylons will have to be erected in the future. The National Grid is supporting the effort to develop the most visually acceptable solutions.