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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 307 records · Page 17
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2021

Evaluation of Topology Optimization to Achieve Energy Savings at the Urban District Level: Preprint

Advanced district thermal energy systems have the potential to achieve significant energy savings and facilitate the integration of renewable thermal resources and waste heat, contributing to reductions in carbon emissions. Such systems, also known as fifth generation district heating and cooling (5GDHC) systems, circulate water at temperatures close to ambient, and leverage electrically-driven water-source heat pumps located at connected buildings to further temper the water. However, barriers exist to the adoption of 5GDHC systems, including the factorial growth in potential network configurations as a function of the number of considered buildings. Topology optimization, which seeks to answer the questions, “Which is the best subset of buildings, if any, to connect to a district thermal energy system, and by what network should they be connected, to minimize life cycle cost?” can accelerate the adoption of 5GDHC systems. This study is part of an effort to develop a topology optimization framework for district thermal energy systems. In this study, a heuristic for one aspect of the topology optimization problem---the use of the minimal spanning tree network to connect a given set of buildings at the least life cycle cost---is validated.

28 EE - Advanced Manufacturing Office (EE-5A)↗
DOE OSTI2020

The Demonstration of Power over Ethernet (PoE) Technologies in Commercial and Institutional Buildings

PoE technologies are currently ubiquitous in offices in the form of phones, access points, and IP security cameras and managed by on-site IT staff. As low voltage DC-power capabilities have increased with network switches, PoE devices are now being integrated across additional building systems, including lighting, computers, and HVAC controls. Since PoE devices are connected to network switches, energy monitoring and management can be performed through the IT network management software. Data and results from technology validations are still very limited for PoE equipment. This lack of information hinders higher adoption as its benefits and challenges have been insufficiently quantified in real-world scenarios. The use of IT network switches to power and control lighting, plug loads, and HVAC were demonstrated at a variety of sites including offices, schools, and a hotel. This paper presents the findings of a three-year DOE-/State of Minnesota-funded project that demonstrated and assessed the energy and non-energy benefits of Power over Ethernet (PoE) technologies at four commercial/institutional sites. The goals of the demonstrations were to: (1) assess the receptiveness of commercial and institutional markets to these new technologies, (2) demonstrate the feasibility of PoE technologies within standard design/construction practices and commercial codes, (3) assess the energy and cost savings opportunities of these technologies, (4) provide energy management opportunities where they typically are not available, and (5) formulate approaches to spur adoption of these technologies in the marketplace.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2024

INL High-Performance and Sustainable Building Strategy

High-performance buildings are reliable, cost effective, and sustainable structures that minimize energy and water use, reduce solid waste and pollutant emissions, and limit the depletion of natural resources. High-performance buildings also provide a thermally and visually comfortable working environment that increases productivity for building occupants. As Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is the nation’s premier nuclear energy research laboratory, the physical infrastructure requires continual updating and repurposing to help accomplish that mission. INL’s infrastructure must incorporate high-performance sustainable design features to be fiscally responsible and reflect an image of innovation to the public and prospective employees. INL is a large consumer of energy with annual energy costs exceeding $16M. This High-Performance and Sustainable Building Strategy will help engineering and construction project teams design sustainable facilities, reduce life cycle operating costs, and support the INL net-zero plan while providing INL employees with a safe and healthy working environment. With these goals in mind, the recommendations described in this document are intended to form INL’s foundation for sustainable and high-performance building standards. This strategy incorporates the latest federal and Department of Energy (DOE) orders and directives, including DOE Order 436.1A, “Departmental Sustainability,” the DOE Sustainability Plan (SP), the INL Site Sustainability Plan (SSP), and Code of Federal Regulations (CFR). This document identifies the requirements of the “Guiding Principles for Sustainable Federal Buildings” (Guiding Principles) and briefly highlights the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold certification. LEED Gold certification can be used to meet many of the requirements of the Guiding Principles.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2024

Shallow Geothermal Resources for Cooling Applications at the University of Hawai‘i

Scientists at Berkeley Lab have teamed up with The University of Hawai‘i at Manoa (UH Manoa) through the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) Energy Transitions Initiative Partnership Project (ETIPP) to evaluate the technological and market feasibility of shallow geothermal heat exchanger (GHE) technology for building cooling, energy efficiency, and emissions reduction applications in Hawai’i. The team is assessing the data necessary to model the feasibility of deploying this technology, the actual models that will be used, and what hurdles need to be overcome to install a demonstration case. UH has an abundance of geologic and geothermal data and is looking to the national labs’ expertise to execute this analysis. UH is also interested in investigating policy, regulatory, and business conditions advantageous for implementation of a pilot project, and more broad deployment of this technology in Hawai‘i. In many locations around the world, the demands for heating and cooling are roughly balanced over the course of the year, so GHEs do not cause significant long-term changes in subsurface temperature. This is not the case in Hawai’i, where the demand for heating is very small, meaning that over time, GHEs will add heat to the subsurface. If temperatures increase significantly, GHE systems will not work as designed. Regional groundwater flow has the potential to sweep heated water away from boreholes, thereby maintaining the functionality of the GHE system. Significant regional groundwater flow requires two things: a sufficiently large driving hydraulic head gradient (usually closely related to surface topography), and sufficient porosity and permeability to enable groundwater to flow in large enough quantities to enable near-borehole temperatures to be maintained at ambient values. Hawai‘i’s volcanic terrain offers ample surface topographic variation. The lava itself shows an extremely large range of porosity and permeability, making it crucial to select sites with large enough values of these properties. Numerical modeling of coupled groundwater and heat flow can be used to determine how large is large enough. Both closed-loop and open-loop systems are being investigated. Another option being considered is using cool seawater as the source of chill. Currently work is progressing on two fronts. A hydrogeologic model for a closed-loop system is being developed for the Stan Sheriff Center at the UH Manoa campus, where a subsurface karst system immediately downgradient of the borefield may provide efficient removal of heated groundwater. The team will also develop a technoeconomic model for this site to compare the cost of cooling using a GHE system with the costs of operating the current air conditioning system. At the state scale, geographic information system (GIS) layers of various attributes relevant for GHE are being combined to develop an overall favorability map for employing GHE in Hawai‘i.

Doughty, C↗
DOE OSTI2026

Scaling Demand Flexibility: Building on 30 Years of Energy Efficiency Success

With electricity consumption across the United States (US) and Canada anticipated to grow, energy efficiency program administrators have a key role to play in helping to ensure energy affordability and reliability in support of the broader economic systems utilities and grid support. Connected, demand side load balancing solutions, such as load shifting heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems and managed charging for electric vehicles (EVs), can dynamically manage energy, allowing for more volumetric electricity consumption without incurring the expense of upgraded transmission and distribution capabilities. When combined, or aggregated, many small loads can be managed to have meaningful impact on energy demand on the grid. Utilities and their partners have an opportunity to leverage decades of experience and the infrastructure needed to assess, design, implement, and measure programs to scale up the adoption of equipment with built-in load flexibility capabilities. Current efforts among a wide variety of electricity system service providers, utilities, standards agencies, regulators, national labs and private industry stakeholders aim to identify common standards, metrics, and methodologies for valuing grid services offered by demand side equipment. By combining those efforts with decades of proven energy efficiency resources, utilities are poised to effectuate a scaling up of equipment with energy management capabilities installed in homes and businesses across the US and Canada. This paper will provide an overview of how utilities are approaching this era of load growth and new peak demands across the United States and Canada. It will highlight the specific strategies that program administrators are employing to advance market transformation for grid-enabled products and devices that have the greatest potential to reduce energy use and increase load flexibility.

Grant, Peter↗
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 OSTI2021

LCC-based framework for building envelope and structure co-design considering energy efficiency and natural hazard performance

Herein, this paper presents a life-cycle cost (LCC) informed co-design framework for building structures and envelope systems, holistically considering the influences of energy and natural hazard performance. The proposed method is consisted of a two-stage design and decision-making process, aiming to provide a quantitative guideline for building's structural and envelope co-design based on the its geographic locations. First, the building's structural configuration and envelope type are selected based on the life cycle cost. Then, the long-term cost effectiveness of various energy-saving building envelope options (e.g., high-performance glazing and insulation) is evaluated to refine the envelope design. The proposed co-design framework was demonstrated through the case study of a medium-size office building archetype in three locations with distinct climate conditions and seismic activities (i.e., Los Angeles, Memphis, and Boston). The results highlighted the interplay between building's structural (seismic) performance and the cost-effectiveness of energy-saving design options – e.g., for buildings located in high-seismic regions, seismic enhancing designs greatly reduce the paybak period of high performance building envelope by reducing the seismic loss; whereas for buildings located in regions with cold climate and low seismic risk such as Boston, spatial frame with high insulation building envelope shows the lowest LCC.

42 ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2020

EVALUATING FACILITY ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND RESILIENCE OPPORTUNITIES WITH FEDS AND MCOR

Energy resilience has become increasingly important for critical building infrastructure, in response to concerns over potential disruptions to the electrical grid from threats both natural and man-made. Energy efficiency can provide a valuable resource for reducing critical loads and therefore lowering the cost of supplying alternative power. This paper highlights two tools that are well-suited for analyzing building energy efficiency and resilience opportunities and presents a case study for their combined application. The Facility Energy Decision System (FEDS) and Microgrid Component Optimization for Resilience (MCOR) tools can be used together to simulate building systems, identify energy efficiency measures, and evaluate resilience options for powering a site during an outage.

FEDS, MCOR, Energy Efficiency, Resilience, Simulat↗
DOE OSTI2022

Accelerating Optimal Integration of Energy Efficiency Strategies with Industrialized Modular Construction: Preprint

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory's (NREL's) Industrialized Construction Innovation team first introduced the Industrialized Construction Assessment Framework to achieve affordable, net-zero energy (NZE) modular multifamily buildings in the 2020 ACEEE paper "Integrating Energy Efficiency Strategies with Industrialized Construction for our Clean Energy Future." Since then, NREL has continued to drive the ambitious plan to accelerate optimal integration of energy efficiency strategies during industrialized construction with little or no additional cost, labor, and production time. This follow-on paper introduces the Energy in Modular (EMOD) buildings method and presents NREL's research efforts over the last two years in collaboration with industry, including affordable housing partners. NREL has developed an idealized NZE modular multifamily building design that incorporates five energy efficiency strategies well suited for industrialized construction in factories: (1) envelope thermal control, (2) envelope infiltration control, (3) mechanical, electrical, and plumbing systems, (4) smart controls, and (5) solar plus storage. This paper highlights results from leveraging design for manufacturing and assembly principles, testing, and validation pilots with factory partners; demonstrating pod prototypes in test stand at NREL; and performing simulations. Overall, these research efforts address barriers to whole-building system integration, such as poor installation quality of thermal and air barriers; lack of unitized systems for space conditioning, energy recovery and ventilation, and water heating; problematic on-site installation, commissioning, and configuration of controls; and lack of cost-effective integration for grid-friendly design and emerging technologies. Conclusively, the paper delineates next steps for future work with NREL's partners toward developing a transformational pathway for our clean energy future.

affordable housing↗
DOE OSTI2023

Performance Evaluation of Liquid-Cooled Open Stand-Alone Refrigerated Cases

This project is part of a joint effort between Commonwealth Edison Company (ComEd) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) to evaluate the energy and demand savings potential of emerging efficient buildings technologies. This project quantifies the energy efficiency benefits from retrofitting an air-cooled, constant-speed compression, self-contained medium-temperature open-vertical display case with a high efficiency water-cooled condensing unit. In addition to a water-cooled heat rejection mechanism, the high-efficiency condensing unit utilizes a variable-speed compressor, electronic expansion valve and advanced controls system. The focus of this project, however, was mainly on capturing the energy savings potentials of the water-cooled condenser, variable-speed compression and electronic expansion valve, and not on the advanced controls. The results of this evaluation will be considered by ComEd and CLEAResult for future energy efficiency rebate offerings.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2021

Extract useful information from building permits data to profile a city’s building retrofit history

Building retrofit is one of the key strategies for cities to reduce energy use and GHG emissions. The historical information about changes to buildings is crucial to infer the buildings’ current energy system efficiency levels and to identify candidate buildings for retrofit. In general, a building permit is required before the start of any construction activity of a building, such as changing building structure, remodeling, or installing new equipment. Moreover, many large cities provide public datasets of building permits in history. Therefore, the permits are a potentially good resource for mining information on the city’s retrofit history. In this study, we use the permit dataset from the city of San Francisco as a case study. Location and time information from the dataset is also used to depict the retrofit timeline of each building and the whole building stock. The type of work of the permit is inferred from the descriptive text by a machine learning model. At last, the limitations of the current permit dataset and potential improvements on the permit data management are discussed to better utilize the information in the future.

Zhang, Wanni↗
DOE OSTI2024

Energy Efficiency Analysis and Grid Service Results for Commercial Buildings using the VOLTRON IoT Platform

In fiscal year 2021 (FY21), the Commercial Buildings Integration Program (CBI) within the Building Technologies Office (BTO), funded PNNL to conduct a field evaluation of the AIRCx and ILC using an Internet-of-Things (IoT) platform, VOLTTRON. The primary goal of the project is to show that software solutions deployed and delivered through an IoT-platform can identify energy efficiency opportunities and manage peak load (beyond the traditional demand response) in commercial buildings. There are also two secondary goals: 1) show that the energy efficiency solutions will result in identification of significant savings opportunities (10% to 30%) as well as energy cost reductions (10% to 15%) by managing the peak load in commercial buildings, and 2) show that an IoT-based software solution is more cost-effective compared to a manual process in meeting the Re-tuning/retro commissioning (RCx) mandates and there is a pathway for broader adoption of this approach. This report provides AIRCx and ILC results for two building located in District of Columbia managed by the energy service provider Intellimation.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2020

Grid-interactive Efficient Buildings Projects Summary

Through its grid-interactive efficient building (GEB) research, DOE’s Building Technologies Office seeks to build on existing energy-efficiency efforts to optimize the interplay among energy efficiency, demand response, behind-the-meter generation and energy storage to increase the flexibility of demand-side management. BTO envisions a future where buildings dynamically operate as part of a low cost, reliable electricity grid while meeting the needs and expectations of building occupants.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
DOE OSTI2022

Contech to Accelerate Cleantech: Seeding Emerging Innovation Programs for Construction Productivity and Energy Efficiency Integration; Preprint

Investments in U.S.-based start-ups that focus on advanced building construction technologies to increase construction productivity (contech) surged to approximately $3.1 billion in 2018 (as per Crunchbase data). More recently, emerging programs by government funding agencies, philanthropic foundations, and venture capitalists have been instrumental in supporting contech start-ups for innovations that increase productivity of energy efficiency integration and accelerate clean energy technologies (cleantech) for the buildings sector. These programs include R&D support and funding mechanisms for contech and cleantech. Traditionally, contech and cleantech are considered as two different innovation ecosystems. To enhance and scale up energy efficiency in buildings, creative programs that bring together contech and cleantech are critical. This paper provides a landscape assessment of the "contech-for-cleantech" innovation ecosystem in the U.S. and its impact in accelerating technology readiness and the development pipeline of "contech-for-cleantech". Technologies highlighted are robotics for retrofits, prefabrication of energy-efficient products, and advanced manufacturing of low-carbon net-zero buildings construction. Programs discussed include those led by (1) government funding agencies: American-Made Challenges with prizes like E-ROBOT for retrofits with robotics, (2) philanthropic foundations: Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator (IN2) that includes focus on energy efficiency and prefabrication, and (3) venture capitalists: Shadow Ventures Green Building Accelerator program which provides funding support to start-ups with ambitious plans for decarbonizing the built environment. This paper will also expand upon robust processes and criteria involved in judging and down-selection of start-ups through vetting and feedback from national lab researchers and industry experts in both cleantech and contech.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2020

Transparent window film with embedded nano-shades for thermoregulation

Every year, more than 20% of the energy consumption in the United States and more than 10% of the global consumption is used towards HVAC (Heating, Ventilating, Air-Conditioning) systems in buildings. Although continued efforts in advancing renewable energy, efficient appliances, and smart building systems are desired, the most critical factors that cause extensive indoor energy consumption are thermal leakage and thermal waste generation. We demonstrate a smart window film that allows natural lighting with a clear view while blocking oblique incident sunlight to make the building interior cooler without using electricity or generating heat. Building upon the concept of, often overlooked, traditional window shades and privacy window films, we emphasize and elevate the application and impact of using magnetically arranged nanoscale material for energy conservation purpose in buildings. By embedding vertically aligned Ni flakes (VANF) in a polymer matrix film, nanoscale mirror array serve as shades to block the high-angled incident sunlight, blocking approximately 73% of total solar irradiance and bringing down the indoor temperature by 1.92 °C during the daytime in a model house while providing nearly 90% transparency. Global application was simulated by applying the respective solar angle and intensity at selected latitudes, indicating their potential. This passively energy-conserving smart film is a low cost, maintenance free, and simple product for users and easy-to-manufacture product for the industry.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2026

Improving energy efficiency while reducing anthropogenic heat from buildings: how retrofits influence the building stock and urban microclimate in Los Angeles

Anthropogenic heat (AH) from buildings contributes to urban overheating, especially during heat waves, yet building retrofit studies usually evaluate energy savings without assessing impacts on AH. This study quantifies how common building retrofit measures affect both building energy use and AH emissions across the City of Los Angeles. Using a bottom-up urban building energy modeling framework coupled with high-resolution local weather from the Weather Research and Forecasting model with Building Effect Parameterization (WRF-BEP), we evaluate eleven retrofit measures and two multi-measure retrofit packages. HVAC and LED lighting retrofits provide the largest city-wide annual site energy savings, while roof coating is most effective for reducing AH. A package optimized for energy savings reduces summer site energy use by about 32% (2.3 TWh), while a package incorporating AH-focused measures reduces the total AH by over 50% (137 PJ) with minimal difference in energy savings. The AH-aware package produces substantially greater urban cooling, reducing mean near-surface air temperature by up to 0.62 ℃ and peak temperature by up to 3.79 ℃. These results show that retrofit strategies selected only for energy savings may overlook major opportunities for urban heat mitigation. The study provides a framework for integrating AH into building retrofit planning and urban heat resilience policy.

Anthropogenic heat↗