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.
This report presents an overview of the development of the Energy Audit Tool along with case study results from the analysis of 40 buildings, and nine audited buildings at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.
This report offers an inventory of the existing relevant educational programming available in the secondary system’s technical schools, in the region’s community colleges, and GPIC partner four-year institutions. It also offers an inventory of workforce development and training programs available through select initiatives such as the Energy Coordinating Agency and Sustainable Business Network. The report also includes some educational programming and credentialing available through select labor unions and business associations.
During BP5, CBEI worked with NREL and ICF to support the DOE Energy Data Accelerator (EDA). CBEI focused on the stakeholder engagement and communication strategy. The responsibilities involved collecting feedback from municipalities and utilities regarding their success and experience with data aggregation and access strategies. CBEI also assisted the EDA program with the regional aspect of the exit strategy at the end of the Accelerator.
This paper presents a systematic development process of whole-building energy models as performance benchmarks for retrofit projects. Statistical regression-based models and computational performance models require utility data for calibration and validation.
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.
A scalable low-cost optimal chiller plant control algorithm was developed and effectively demonstrated with 128 case studies covering a variety of chiller plant load variations with each case being a weekly simulation of whole-building dynamic HVAC system models with closed loop local controls and supervisory chiller plant controls. Model-in-the-loop (MiL) analysis suggests a promising average energy saving of ~15% for medium office buildings and an average energy saving of ~10% for large hotel buildings.
CBEI developed a web-based integrated design decision support tool which utilizes energy performance data generated through coupling of whole building energy simulation models with systematic search procedures and advanced data analysis techniques. This coupling process was extended with the introduction of a simulation-based numerical optimization framework for the minimization of life cycle costs for building enclosure materials and operational energy consumption for office retrofit cases. This integrated optimization program is highly automated (thereby saving user effort) and utilizes non-commercial, open-source and readily extensible existing toolkits.
This project developed and demonstrated novel techniques for cost-effective AFDD for Air Handling Units for small/medium commercial buildings. The diagnostic accuracy is over 95% and the payback period is less than two years.
This report summarized an analysis of ten multifamily buildings for the cost of deep energy retrofits, without including power generation.
The paper presents a detailed study on the influence of building envelope upon the building’s life cycle performance and optimizes the design of the building envelope con-figurations, based on the detailed results obtained from a computational framework in which the whole-building energy simulation program of EnergyPlus v6.0 is coupled with GenOpt v3.0 generic optimization tool.
CBEI developed and demonstrated a set of tools and approaches for generating and implementing building-specific control algorithms that minimize energy consumption and energy costs while maintaining occupant comfort. The general approach involves the use of model-based predictive control (MPC) with reduced-order models and inverse (data-driven) models for the building envelope, indoor environment, and plant.
Mesh generation is a critical and manually intensive step in CFD simulations in the architectural domain. This paper presents an approach to generate adaptive hexahedral-dominate meshes for CFD simulations in sustainable architectural design applications.
CBEI developed a roadmap to guide technology research. The roadmap is focused on conducting research using existing and state-of-the-art building components and systems in an integrated fashion.
Resiliency is a growing concern for municipalities. This report explains how energy retrofits can align to community resiliency.
CBEI conducted an analysis of energy use in New York City commercial and multifamily buildings. This paper describes energy and building characteristics for the overall population of buildings and using model-based clustering methods, this paper then identifies key clusters of energy use and building characteristics in the multifamily sector.