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Research Tracker

This tool is intended for researchers and program managers to quickly find research projects around the country that are relevant to their work. The four organizations who provided content for this purpose represent the largest energy efficient buildings research portfolios in the country. These organizations each provided the content that they were comfortable sharing publically. Therefore, upon clicking on a particular project, it is possible that certain pieces of content are not present. Where possible, a point of contact is provided so that specific questions can be directed to that person. We welcome your comments! If you would like to provide any feedback on this tool (positive or constructive) please email basc@pnnl.gov.

Showing results 1 - 50 of 165

A "Plug-n-Play" Air Delivery System for Low-Load Homes and Evaluation of a Residential Thermal Comfort Rating Method

IBACOS will investigate a simplified residential air delivery system to resolve comfort issues reported in low-load, production-built homes. This project could result in state-of-the-art comfort distribution systems, as well as a thermal comfort metric that helps builders and HVAC contractors measure and communicate the value of improved comfort delivery systems.

A Combined Water Heater, Dehumidifier, and Cooler

The University of Florida will develop a technology for compact, low-cost combined water heating, dehumidification, and space cooling. This technology has the potential to save 480 TBtu/year in water heating and an additional 135 TBtu/year by reducing the air conditioning load.

A Constructible and Durable High-Performance Walls System: Extended Plate and Beam

Home Innovation Research Labs, Inc. will work to make the extended plate and beam system of incorporating insulation more accessible to builders through demonstration projects, technical documents, and code compliance assistance. Findings from these activities could play a critical role in improving the efficiency of home heating and cooling, which typically account for 40% of a home's energy consumption.

A New Generation of Building Insulation by Foaming Polymer Blend Materials

The Industrial Science & Technology Network, Inc. will develop an environmentally clean, cost-effective building insulation with superior performance. Commercialization of this technology would reduce U.S. energy consumption related to building envelope components by 7%, equal to $8 billion in annual economic savings.

A New Hybrid Approach to Energy Modeling

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory will identify an alternative method to estimate two difficult-to-measure inputs used in building energy modeling. The end product will simplify and help automate the process of creating a calibrated model for existing buildings.

Accelerate Performance

Seventhwave's Accelerate Performance scales owner demand for energy performance at a cost comparable to current construction by eliminating key market bariers. This program will achieve an average of 50% realized savings compared to traditional 30% modeled savings for aggressive new construction projects.

Acoustic Building Infiltration Measurement System (ABIMS)

Argonne National Laboratory will develop an acoustic method of measuring the infiltration of a building envelope. The method will enable infiltration measurement of all buildings, which could lead to decreased building energy use.

Affordable High-R Panel Wall System Demonstration

The University of Minnesota will field test an innovative insulated solid-panel building envelope system that (1) eliminates thermal bridging, improves durability, and reduces construction costs compared to conventional, wood-framed construction; and (2) is appropriate for the affordable housing market.

All-Digital Plug and Play Passive RFID Sensors for Energy Efficient Building Control

Clemson University, with their partners Harvard University, Phase IV Engineering Corp., and Iowa Energy Center, will develop, demonstrate and pre-commercialize low-cost, digital plug-and-play, passive radio frequency identification sensors for measuring indoor and outdoor temperature and humidity, which will improve building operations and cut energy costs.

America Saves! Energizing Main Street's Small Businesses

The National Trust for Historic Preservation will provide low-cost energy efficiency services to small businesses in California, Wisconsin, New York, and Washington State. These efforts aim to increase small business participation in energy retrofit programs and could lead to up to $30 billion in annual energy savings.

Assessing the Market and Space-Conditioning Needs of Low-Load Homes

High performance, low-load homes face unique space conditioning challenges that are not adequately addressed by HVAC design practices and equipment offerings. Equipment manufacturers have yet to include a diverse set of low-capacity equipment in their product offerings due to a lack of understanding of (1) where the low-load home market is headed and (2) the load profiles typical to low-load homes. This project looks to address both of these information gaps and ultimately send the necessary low-capacity equipment market signals to manufacturers, enabling them to design better products to meet production builder needs. The team will develop a technical whitepaper and presentation on the performance and cost tradeoffs of various equipment types/systems at meeting the comfort requirements of low-load homes, and forecasting the market penetration and equipment needs for these low-load homes.

Attic Retrofits Using Nail-Based Insulated Panels

Home Innovation Research Labs, Inc. will study a new approach to roof insulation retrofits that can be installed in one step and result in semi-conditioned attics. Findings from this project could play a critical role in improving the efficiency of home heating and cooling, which typically account for 40% of a home's energy consumption.

Baseline Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) Field Study in Occupied New U.S. Homes: Hot-Humid and Mixed-Humid Climates

This project is part of a national study aimed at characterizing indoor air quality in occupied homes. The homes will be up to current energy codes, and researchers will closely monitor the use and performance of mechanical ventilation systems in those homes. Indoor and outdoor air will be sampled for formaldehyde, nitrogen oxides, carbon dioxide, and particulates as part of the indoor air quality characterization.

Bio-Based, Noncorrosive, Nonflammable Phenolic Foam Insulation

The Fraunhofer Center for Sustainable Energy Systems will develop a plastic foam for use in U.S. buildings that is less expensive, mechanically stronger, and more environmentally friendly than current options. This foam will satisfy fire safety codes without the need for fire retardants and is easy to install.

Building America Partnership for Improved Residential Constructions

The University of Central Florida will demonstrate and validate energy-efficient residential ventilation and space conditioning systems. Advanced whole-house residential construction practices can achieve 50% energy savings compared to houses built to code in hot/humid climates.

Building Efficiency Technologies by Tomorrow's Engineers and Researchers (BETTER) Capstone

The Georgia Institute of Technology will support 20 student project teams in developing building energy efficiency technologies through a capstone design project. This effort will better prepare students for employment in the building energy efficiency sector. Additionally, the combined energy savings from these projects is estimated to add up to over 1.8 Quads per year.

Building Energy Management Open Source Software Development (BEMOSS)

The Virginia Tech Advanced Research Institute will develop a software platform that improves sensing and control of equipment in small and medium-sized commercial buildings. The platform will be able to optimize electricity usage to reduce energy consumption and help implement demand response.

Building Tune-Up Accelerator

The City of Seattle will engage with building owners, managers, and service providers to develop market expertise to train local building operations professionals to more effectively tune-up existing buildings, which could reduce city energy costs by $1.5 million annually. Professionals will tune-up 70-80 buildings with 10-20% energy savings, and complete capital retrofits to 20-30 buildings providing 35% energy savings, for a total of 1 billion kBtu annual savings.

Case Study on Cold Climate Heat Pump Performance

This project picks up on an ET project with long-term performance monitoring of a cold climate heat pump in Fairbanks, AK. In the United States, approximately 14.4 million dwellings use electricity for heating in cold and very cold regions, consuming 0.16 quads of energy annually. A high-performance cold climate heat pump (CCHP) can result in significant savings over current technologies (greater than 70% compared to strip heating) and in annual primary energy savings of 0.1 quads when fully deployed, which is equivalent to a reduction of 5.9 million tons of annual carbon dioxide emissions. A case study will be created for submission to the Building America Solution Center that documents how the equipment performed during the field study, including estimated HSPF and SEER ratings for this type of technology in order to provide a reference for comparison to existing equipment.

Certification and Rating of Attachments for Fenestration Technologies (CRAFT)

The Window Covering Manufacturing Association will create the Attachments Energy Rating Council to develop an independent rating, certification, labeling, and performance verification program for window attachments. This program will help drive market penetration of energy-saving products and further innovation in the industry.

cold climate air source heat pumps: market assessment and guidance for trades

NEEP conducted a market assessment of existing installer practices as well as existing guidance tools, protocols and resources specific to cold climates. Using the market assessment findings, NEEP developed ccashp design and installation guidance for trade contractors. The documents are developed to assist installers around sizing and selecting ASHPs for cold climate applications, while preserving high efficiency, performance, and customer satisfaction. HI Cat will cross-promote and link to the guidance.

Commercial Advanced Lighting Control (ALC) Demonstration and Deployment

The Northeast Energy Efficiency Partnerships will demonstrate advanced lighting controls (ALCs), which turn off or dim lights when they are not in use, in 10 buildings in order to address barriers to ALC adoption. Installing ALC systems in all commercial buildings would save approximately 1,053 TBtu of energy or $10.4 billion/year.

Compact Thermoelastic Cooling System

Maryland Energy and Sensor Technologies, LLC will develop a compact, high-efficiency thermoelastic cooling system. This next-generation HVAC technology will have low environmental impact and a small carbon footprint and could lead to substantial efficiency gains in building heating and cooling.

Comprehensive Lighting Controls Program

NextEnergywill reduce market barriers to adoption of lighting controls solution to spur market adoption. This will be achieved through demonstrations, consumer education, and utility incentive adjustment. NextEnergy and partners will train over 100 contractors in advanced lighting controls and simplified installation methods and develop a model for streamlined incentives for lighting controls.

Crowdsourced Microfinance for Energy Efficiency in Underserved Communities

BlocPower will develop a crowd-sourcing website to help market, finance, and install energy efficiency retrofits for 1,500 small buildings in low-income communities across the country. These efforts could help these communities achieve notable energy savings and reduce their carbon emissions.

Demonstration of micro-CHP in Light of Commercial Hot Water Applications

A.O. Smith Corporation will demonstrate underutilized micro-combined-heat-and-power (micro-CHP) applications, which produce electricity and heat from a single source, in buildings with significant hot water demand. These micro-CHP applications can provide 38% energy savings in these building types.

Development and Industrialization of InGaN/GaN LEDs on Patterned Sapphire Substrates for Low Cost Emitter Architecture

Lumileds, LLC will reduce LED manufacturing costs by eliminating some of the complex processes associated with current flip-chip technology and enabling lower-cost packaging methods. This project looks to address the needs of the indoor and outdoor illumination markets, which demand the most competitive Lm/W and Lm/$ characteristics in small footprint components.

Development of Isocyanurate-Based Super Insulation at Atmospheric Pressure (SIAP)

The project effort is a two-year development program focused on isocyanurate-based nanofoam for building and industrial applications. The main target of this early stage innovation project is to develop a PIR-based super insulation at atmospheric pressure (SIAP) that (1) can attain an R-12 hrft2F/Btuin (_=12 mW/mK) via creating nanoporous morphology, (2) is mechanically robust and (3) is cost-competitive to the conventional rigid foam boards.

Development of the Industry's First Smart Range Hood

Newport Partners, in partnership with Broan-NuTone, will develop and validate a smart range hood that senses pollutants and automatically operates to remove the contaminants efficiently. The proposed smart range hood will be quiet (<1 sone), five times more energy efficient than todays ENERGY STAR models, and will capture nearly 100% of pollutants.

Dynamically Responsive Infrared Windows Coating

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory will develop a low-cost window coating that allows infrared (heat) penetration in cooler temperatures but switches to reflect infrared waves in warmer temperatures. This coating has the potential to save up to 2.24 quads/year in heating, cooling, and lighting energy use.

Eliminating Plasmon Losses in High Efficiency White Organic Light Emitting Devices for Lighting Applications

University of Michigan - Ann Arbor will develop innovative methods to outcouple the light within OLED devices in order to increase external quantum efficiency. This will be accomplished through nanoscale texturing beneath the anode outside the active region, fabricating sub-anode gratings along with microlens arrays, and top emitting structures with a sub-anode grid coupled with a reflective mirror at the base.

Energy Design and Scoping Tool for DC Distribution Systems

This project will assess the DC power market to understand distribution opportunities, technical and analytical gaps for residential and commercial applications, and inform the analysis, design, and planning capabilities of these loads. The team will extend DOEs open-source whole-building energy modeling tools platformthe EnergyPlus engine and OpenStudio software development kitwith power distribution system modeling capabilities to enable evaluation of energy and economic benefits of AC, DC, and hybrid power distribution systems.

Energy-harvesting, Self-calibrating Wireless Sensors for Improving EE in Buildings

Oak Ridge National Laboratory will develop system-level architecture for a plug-and-play multi-sensor platform, which can utilize peel-and-stick sensors less than a quarter of an inch thick and powered by indoor, high-performance, flexible photovoltaics. By developing sensors that are multi-functional and self-powered, this innovative platform can be adopted and deployed for wider spread energy efficiency of buildings.

Equipment Health Monitoring with Virtual Intelligent Sensing

Oak Ridge National Laboratory will develop a monitoring system capable of identifying opportunities for energy efficiency improvements in buildings. The technology could improve the energy efficiency of buildings by 15% - 25%.

Fabricate On-Demand Vacuum Insulating Glazings

PPG Industries, Inc. will develop a process to produce cheaper, stronger vacuum insulating glazings (VIGs), which are used to make windows more energy efficient. This process could lead to increased adoption of VIGs in windows, which would lead to significant energy savings.