The presentations, news, research summaries, reports, and technology overviews are collected here by focus area and represent the body of work developed by the CBEI partners during the 5-year project period. For additional information on market challenges, approach, and impacts, see each focus area overview.
Brokers are in a unique position to help their clients understand the potential impacts of energy efficiency. This fact sheet provides an overview of why broker training is valuable.
This report is the pdf version of the CBEI Final report and results.
CBEI conducted research to develop and demonstrate a library of diagnostics decision support tools that can enable cost effective diagnostics solutions for existing buildings. This report describes early results in successfully developing and demonstrating the effectiveness of diagnostics and decision support tools for subsystem diagnostics (RTU, DX, AHU-VAV and building envelope subsystems) and fault prioritization.
A novel algorithm was tested against a large and diversified dataset comprising points from five buildings, two vendors, three distributors and more than 20K points. Overall the algorithm identifies about 90% of VAVs and 80% of AHUs and reaches an accuracy of about 90% in detecting the points required by a test application. The algorithm was incorporated into a VOLTTRON ready utility.
A fault detection and diagnostics system for rooftop air conditioners was developed using low-cost electronics. The system was designed to be compatible with the VOLTTRONTM platform. The underlying fault detection and diagnostics methodology utilizes virtual sensors to measure parts of the equipment operation that are sensitive to common faults. Using virtual sensors reduces costs while also providing accurate and reliable diagnostics.
This project implemented, validated and documented an automated system for training virtual refrigerant charge sensors for rooftop unit ACs. The system automatically tunes empirical parameters of a virtual sensor for estimating the amount of refrigerant in a system. The engineering time and costs associated with calibrating a virtual sensor are reduced because of the automated testing in an open laboratory and the reduced number of tests.
Building 661 (B661) was intended is to be the CBEI Headquarters and was designed to encourage collaboration, and to serve as a catalyst to demonstrate energy efficient retrofit innovations, advocacy, practice and commercialization strategies to radically reduce energy use in the existing commercial/institutional building stock. These case studies review the design, construction and initial operation of the building.
The CBEI Corner Grocery Store Project carried out small grocery store energy audits and analysis in the city of Philadelphia. It also analyzed and compared the small business Direct Install programs of utilities in the states of Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, and New York. The emphasis of this analysis was relevance to the small urban grocery store owner.
CBEI facilitated integrated visioning, expert workshops and design charrettes for Building 661, which contributed to the development of a report on enclosure technologies with an emphasis on engaging the building systems and systems integration critical to high performance retrofits. The report is focused on typical (older) small commercial buildings.
This project provides a market analysis report and recommendations for improving uptake on shading, film, and window attachments (SFWA) products in small to medium-sized commercial buildings. It includes different market perspectives (barriers and opportunities) from; building owners, designers, shading and window attachment manufacturers/distributors, and utility incentive program managers.
In 2015-16 United Technologies Research Center (UTRC), in collaboration with the CBEI, developed OpenStudio measures for seven systems/components used in HVAC retrofit packages identified with high energy saving potentials in BP4 for small office, medium office, stand-alone retail, and primary school buildings in certain climate zones.
A practical control algorithm for coordinating bot AC and refrigeration equipment was developed and evaluated using an energy simulation testbed for a convenience store. It was validated using actual convenience store data. The simulations allowed evaluations of savings for the unit coordinator compared to conventional control over a cooling season. The controller was designed to minimize implementation costs in that it does not require additional sensors and is self-learning.
Field demonstrations provided test and evaluation data for virtual sensor based AFDD concepts and provided a laboratory demonstration on the VOLTTRON platform.
HVAC package solutions were identified that met the stated objectives, based on 6 building types (quick service restaurant, full service restaurant, small hotel. large hotel, supermarket, and convenience store) in 6 region/climate zone combinations.
CBEI conducted modeling and demonstrations to evaluate multiple technologies, including air movement strategies, ultraviolet germicidal irradiation, hybrid ventilation and under floor air distribution, ventilation and shading systems, impact of roof color and roof insulation, lighting and shading controls and devices, high performance glazing, roof retrofit technologies, photosensor controlled electric lighting, and swirl diffusers.