Engineering topics

Franconi, Ellen M.

Publications and source records attributed to Franconi, Ellen M..

5 records

DOE OSTI2024

Commercial Zero Code Plug-In: Zero Energy and Operational Emissions Overlay for Model Energy Codes (Technical Brief)

Model energy codes (MEC) describe requirements needed to demonstrate building energy performance compliance. They can be readily adopted by states and local jurisdictions to support desirable energy efficiency investment in new buildings and major renovations. This report provides commercial building energy code language as an overlay to current MEC, which is recognized by the U.S. DOE as ASHRAE Standard 90.1 2022. The code language provides a performance-based compliance path for achieving net zero energy or net zero operational energy emissions buildings with MEC. The path requires meeting two compliance metric target values: 1) a required minimum level of efficiency and 2) a measure of zero energy or emissions. The supporting documentation illustrates the magnitude of needed efficiency improvement and the additional offsets to be achieved from renewable energy sources.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

DOE OSTI2022

Optimizing Price-Informed Operation of a Battery Storage System in an Office Building

New prescriptive efficiency requirements amended to US model energy codes historically have been evaluated using an average, blended electricity rate, which obscures demand charges. Post 2019, new measures can be evaluated using a representative time-of-use (TOU) tariff yet more sophisticated analysis methods are needed to consider a variety of TOU tariffs and assess price-informed control. To address these needs, this study couples building prototype simulation model with varying-in-sophistication battery storage operating strategies for different electricity TOU tariffs. The analysis compares the impact of operating a battery storage system following simpler rule-of-thumb methods versus a semi-optimized priced-informed heuristic approach. The investigation demonstrates that the heuristic approach results in greater electricity cost savings and is practical to implement.

Lei, Xuechen↗

DOE OSTI2021

Building Energy Codes and Grid-Interactive Efficient Buildings: How building energy codes can enable a more dynamic and energy-efficient built environment

This report considers the role of national model codes to promote grid-interactive efficient buildings (GEBs) as part of the modernization of the U.S. electricity grid. It introduces GEBs, describes their ability to support a clean, resilient grid, and considers challenges and approaches for incorporating GEB measures into national model energy codes and standards. Desirable traits of GEB include being low energy, low peaking, and responsive to grid needs, and minimizing the curtailment of renewable energy resources. In addition, the future grid incurs a time and locational value on these types of building services. Accounting for these considerations in future code development requires a continuation and expansion of code-minimum energy efficiency requirements and inclusion of demand responsive and load flexibility measures while ensuring annual use and cost reductions. Also, efforts to include GEB measures in codes will be limited until they are fully developed into an American National Standards Institute (ANSI)-approved standard. Then it would be straightforward to address GEB measures through points or packages and/or scoring requirements. Otherwise, the building code would have to describe each specific grid responsive strategy. This document reviews topics pertinent to considering codes in this context. Specifically, the study presents the status and direction of current building energy codes, the future smart grid, low-energy buildings, and grid-integrated buildings. The report concludes with recommendations for future code development activities to support low-energy, grid-interactive buildings in order to provide added value to building owners, the grid, and society.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

DOE OSTI2021

Electric Readiness in Residential Energy Codes (Technical Brief)

This technical brief provides requirements for electric readiness that could be incorporated into model residential energy codes. It provides background on the basis and benefits of the provisions, and model code language that can be plugged into the IECC or adapted into other energy codes.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

DOE OSTI2020

Opening the Door to Grid-Interactive Efficient Buildings with Energy Codes

Building codes represent standard design practice in the construction industry and must continually evolve to account for advancing technologies and innovative practices. Energy codes have historically focused on energy efficiency within buildings and across their systems. However, many of tomorrow's technologies go beyond efficiency and target increased flexibility. These demand flexibility (DF) measures can postpone or reduce building electric load based on price or other grid signals, and include smart appliances, connected lighting, and connected mechanical systems. Expanding codes to enable such grid-interactive efficient building (GEB) has the potential to influence their realization at scale, which will support renewable-energy grid-integration and building-sector decarbonization. However, considering DF measures in code development creates a new set of challenges for codes and the practices contained therein. This paper considers the role of building energy codes in enabling GEB. Specifically, it reviews the status of demand flexibility (DF) measures in current commercial building energy code. It examines the national model code development process and identifies components barring the consideration and inclusion of DF measures - including code scope, characterization and analysis of proposed new prescriptive measures, and accounting for time-of-day and geographic differences in their benefits. The paper presents findings from code development analyses that indicate the cost benefit of DF measures and the limitations associated with current code development conventions. To encourage building flexibility and improved energy resilience moving forward, recommendations are made for removing code development barriers and sanctioning DF measure consideration in future model codes.

Building Energy Codes and Standards, Grid-Interact↗