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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 361 records · Page 20
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2022

A Machine Learning-Assisted Framework to Control Thermally Anisotropic Building Envelopes in Residential Buildings

To curb the energy consumption of buildings and their related CO2 emissions, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) has developed the thermally anisotropic building envelope (TABE) —a multi-layer design comprising insulation materials and metal foils connected to thermal loops. In this study, a machine learning-assisted framework was developed to control the TABE in residential buildings to reduce the computation load for future optimal rule-based control and application. First, a 2D finite element model was established in COMSOL to calculate the hourly heat flux through exterior walls installed with the TABE. Then, TABE wall heat fluxes were simulated for various given indoor and outdoor boundary conditions, as well as thermal loops fluid temperatures and flow rates. Since the finite element simulations are computationally expensive, an artificial neural network (ANN) was then trained to use as a proxy of the finite element (COMSOL) modeling. Finally, the trained ANN model was coupled with the EnergyPlus model to predict the energy consumption of a US Department of Energy prototype single-family house installed with the TABE. An optimal simple rule-based control was determined from predefined rules for a case study. The results demonstrate that the developed machine learning–assisted framework can reduce 99.9% of the computation time while efficiently managing residential building energy for installed TABE walls.

Shen, Zhenglai↗
DOE OSTI2014

Better Building Alliance, Plug and Process Loads in Commercial Buildings: Capacity and Power Requirement Analysis (Brochure)

This brochure addresses gaps in actionable knowledge that can help reduce the plug load capacities designed into buildings. Prospective building occupants and real estate brokers lack accurate references for plug and process load (PPL) capacity requirements, so they often request 5-10 W/ft2 in their lease agreements. This brochure should be used to make these decisions so systems can operate more energy efficiently; upfront capital costs will also decrease. This information can also be used to drive changes in negotiations about PPL energy demands. It should enable brokers and tenants to agree about lower PPL capacities. Owner-occupied buildings will also benefit. Overestimating PPL capacity leads designers to oversize electrical infrastructure and cooling systems.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2016

Building America Case Study: Design Guidance for Passive Vents in New Construction Multifamily Buildings, New York, New York

This document addresses the use of passive vents as a source of outdoor air in multifamily buildings. The challenges associated with implementing passive vents and the factors affecting performance are outlined. A comprehensive design methodology and quantified performance metrics are provided. Two hypothetical design examples are provided to illustrate the process. This document is intended to be useful to designers, decision-makers, and contractors implementing passive ventilation strategies. It is also intended to be a resource for those responsible for setting high-performance building program requirements, especially pertaining to ventilation and outdoor air. To ensure good indoor air quality, a dedicated source of outdoor air is an integral part of high-performance buildings. Presently, there is a lack of guidance pertaining to the design and installation of passive vents, resulting in poor system performance. This report details the criteria necessary for designing, constructing, and testing passive vent systems to enable them to provide consistent and reliable levels of ventilation air from outdoors.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2016

Building America Case Study: Trade-Friendly Retrofit Insulated Panels for Existing Buildings, Albany, New York

This project evaluated the effectiveness and affordability of integrating retrofit insulated panels into a re-siding project. The Partnership for Home Innovation (PHI) teamed with New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), the Albany Housing Authority (AHA), and the New York State Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) administered by Albany Community Action Partnership to demonstrate an energy retrofit and siding upgrade on a two-story, seven unit, multifamily building in Albany New York (CZ 5). The project focused on accomplishing three goals - doubling the existing wall thermal resistance (from approximately R-13 to a weighted average of R-27), reduction of building air leakage, and completion of the retrofit within a budget where the additional cost for upgrading wall's thermal resistance is equal to the cost of the standard re-siding effort (i.e., the total cost of the energy efficient re-siding scope of work is not more than double the cost of the standard re-siding effort). Lessons learned from the project strongly indicate that the retrofit panel technology can be installed using common installation practices and with minimal training. Other lessons learned include limitation on the use of standard air sealing materials during cold weather installations and the need to develop better installation guidance for trades working with the level of tolerances that may be present in the existing structure. This technology demonstration showed that exterior retrofit panels provide a viable and reasonable option for the siding trades to increase market opportunities and achieve synergistic benefits for aesthetic upgrades to a building's exterior.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗
DOE OSTI2016

Energy Savings Modeling and Inspection Guidelines for Commercial Building Federal Tax Deductions for Buildings in 2016 and Later

This document provides guidance for modeling and inspecting energy-efficient property in commercial buildings for certification of the energy and power cost savings related to Section 179D of the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) enacted in Section 1331 of the 2005 Energy Policy Act (EPAct) of 2005, noted in Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Notices 2006-52 (IRS 2006), 2008-40 (IRS 2008) and 2012-26 (IRS 2012), and updated by the Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes (PATH) Act of 2015. Specifically, Section 179D provides federal tax deductions for energy-efficient property related to a commercial building's envelope; interior lighting; heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC); and service hot water (SHW) systems. This document applies to buildings placed in service on or after January 1, 2016.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2025

Highly Resolved Reference Projections of Building Energy Use for the Contiguous United States: Building Sector Energy Baselines, Projection Methods, and Results

This report describes one methodology of projecting energy consumption of the US residential and commercial building sectors using NREL's ResStock™ and ComStock™ as well as growth rates derived from EIA's Annual Energy Outlook (AEO). The impetus for this work is to provide an intermediate method for compiling demand-side sectoral energy projections that is suitable for grid-scale analysis, such as NREL's Standard Scenarios. ResStock and ComStock are physics-based and statistically representative building stock models of the US residential and commercial sector, respectively. Using the 2012 actual meteorological year (AMY) weather data, the sectoral energy baselines are simulated and then segmented along key dimensions (e.g., geography, dwelling/building type). The segmented results are then scaled using the corresponding annual growth rates derived from the 2021 AEO reference case to produce energy projections out to 2050. The compiled result is a demand-side grid model (dsgrid) data set suitable for use in NREL's large-scale grid models, such as the Regional Energy Deployment System (ReEDS). This simple projection method does not endogenously represent how the building stock could evolve through time. Most notably, it does not reflect large-scale electrification, for example, the conversion of space heating, water heating, clothes drying, and cooking from primary fossil fuels to electricity, as this is not part of AEO's reference case assumptions. Nonetheless this approach is more resolved and potentially extensible compared to the current method used by Standard Scenarios's reference case, which augments a sector's total load based on a single growth rate from AEO.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2023

Development of Building Design Optimization Methodology: Residential Building Applications

Building design optimization is a highly complex problem, requiring long computational running processes because of the many options that exist when a building is being designed. This paper introduces an integrated approach through which to perform this optimization within an acceptable time frame. The approach includes the methods of variable selection, model simplification, and a sequential optimization process. Using singular value decomposition, a large number of design variables is reduced to a smaller subset that can be solved more quickly through the optimization algorithm. To expedite the variable selection process, a modeling approach that quickly simulates annual energy consumption was developed to replace full annual energy simulations. The developed methodology was applied to two residential buildings in the US, and the results are discussed herein. To assess the accuracy of the integrated optimization methodology, the optimized life cycle costs are compaa variables demonstrating the strongest contributions in the optimization study were identified. The proposed methodology significantly shortened the time requirements for the optimization processes of the two case studies by 74% and 84%; the optimized life cycle costs were within 0.05% and 0.06%, respectively, of the optimum point.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2017

Transforming Ordinary Buildings into Smart Buildings via Low-Cost, Self-Powering Wireless Sensors & Sensor Networks

The research objective of this project is to design and demonstrate a low-cost, compact, easy-to-deploy, maintenance-free sensor node technology, and a network of such sensors, which enable the monitoring of multiphysical parameters and can transform today’s ordinary buildings into smart buildings with environmental awareness. We develop the sensor node and network via engineering and integration of existing technologies, including high-efficiency mechanical energy harvesting, and ultralow-power integrated circuits (ICs) for sensing and wireless communication. Through integration and innovative power management via specifically designed low-power control circuits for wireless sensing applications, and tailoring energy-harvesting components to indoor applications, the target products will have smaller volume, higher efficiency, and much lower cost (in both manufacturing and maintenance) than the baseline technology. Our development and commercialization objective is to create prototypes for our target products under the CWRU-Intwine collaboration.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2021

Grid-Interactive Building Solutions: Synapse from Kinetic Buildings

This fact sheet describes a grid-interactive efficient building technology that is undergoing field validation tests through DOE's National Labs. It summarizes the technology application (Synapse software from Kinetic Buildings) and the characteristics of the field validation site.

grid-interactive efficient buildings, GEB, technol↗
DOE OSTI2019

Validation on Aggregate Flexibility from Residential Air Conditioning Systems for Building-to-Grid Integration

To facilitate the integration of buildings to the power grid, battery-equivalent models have been proposed to characterize and quantify aggregate flexibility from building loads. An analytical method has been proposed to construct such a flexibility model for thermostatically controlled loads. Since this analytical method is derived from a simplified representation of building thermal dynamics, it is necessary to evaluate the resulting flexibility model in a more realistic context. This paper focuses on the validation of this analytical method for estimating aggregate flexibility from residential air conditioning (ACs) systems. A high-fidelity model is first developed to mimic thermal behaviors of a residential AC system through a co-simulation between Modelica and EnergyPlus. A population of virtual residential AC systems is then generated by randomizing parameters of the high-fidelity model. Finally, an aggregate flexibility model is constructed for the residential AC population using the analytical method and validated using results from simulation of the high-fidelity model. It is found that the flexibility estimated using the analytical method is with reasonable accuracy, but can be improved by explicitly incorporating heat gains into the method.

Huang, Sen↗
DOE OSTI2017

Development of Automated Procedures to Generate Reference Building Models for ASHRAE Standard 90.1 and India’s Building Energy Code and Implementation in OpenStudio

This paper describes a software system for automatically generating a reference (baseline) building energy model from the proposed (as-designed) building energy model. This system is built using the OpenStudio Software Development Kit (SDK) and is designed to operate on building energy models in the OpenStudio file format.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2023

Building ControlScore: Research Laboratory Building Deployment

Improvements to building control systems can lead to energy savings and increased occupant comfort. In an optimized system, process variables such as air temperature will closely follow their desired setpoints and avoid excess energy use. Typically, experts must manually inspect individual control loops to identify poor performance and opportunities for improvement. However, this approach is difficult in modern buildings that have a prohibitively large number of controllers. To address this issue, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) created the ControlScore tool which captures operating data from the many controllers within a building and generates standardized scores for each loop on a scale of 0 to 10 (a score of 0 indicates poor control, a score of 10 indicates good control).

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2025

2024 Stor4Build Annual Meeting: Exploring Challenges and Opportunities in Thermal Energy Storage for Buildings

In late August 2024, Stor4Build brought nearly 80 stakeholders from the thermal energy storage industry to Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), including researchers, startups, electric utilities, nonprofits, implementers, state energy efficiency offices, and original equipment manufacturers. During the two-day Stor4Build Annual Meeting, participants engaged in vital discussions about the current challenges and opportunities for scaling thermal energy storage solutions in buildings. The event featured panel discussions led by leading technology experts and industry practitioners, as well as updates on Stor4Build–funded projects from national laboratories, highlighting advancements in the thermal energy storage field crucial to achieving the consortium’s mission.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗
DOE OSTI2024

Hardware-in-the-loop Laboratory Performance Verification of Flexible Building Equipment in a Typical Commercial Building

This project aims to develop high-resolution equipment performance and occupant data that quantifies demand flexibility in typical commercial buildings. The dataset documented in this report includes comprehensive time-series measurements from hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) experiments conducted across multiple testbeds designed to simulate realistic operational environments for HVAC systems. Specifically, it captures minute-by-minute high-resolution data on the performance of various typical HVAC systems, including a variable-air-volume (VAV) air handling unit (AHU) system with chillers and an ice tank in the Intelligent Building Agents Laboratory (IBAL) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a two-stage air-source heat pump (ASHP) at the NIST, and a water-source heat pump (WSHP) at Texas A&M University (TAMU). The data were generated under a range of controlled conditions reflecting different grid scenarios and climatic influences, as well as various control strategies, building types, occupancy patterns, and occupant behaviors. This dataset provides DE-EE0009153 Final Report 5 detailed insights into the demand flexibility of these systems, including their response to grid signals, occupant behaviors, energy consumption patterns, and operational efficiency under different conditions.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗