Research Tracker

A number of states are integrating residential energy labeling into their policies for new and existing homes. This efforts looks to develop best practices for states working in this area.

Unico Systems will develop a highly efficient, cost-effective residential cold climate heat pump that maintains efficiency and reliability at very low temperatures. The technology could lead to annual energy savings of 0.1 quads, equal to a reduction of 5.9 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), in partnership with ClimateWell and Rheem, will develop a residential, gas-fired split heat pump that will use an ammonia refrigerant, which is not a greenhouse gas and can convert chemical energy to heating and cooling without using any moving seals.

In recent years, hundreds of communities have been working to promote energy efficiency upgrades in homes and other buildings, through programs such as the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program, Home Performance with ENERGY STAR, utility-sponsored programs, and others. The Better Buildings Residential Program Solution Center is a repository for key lessons, resources, and knowledge collected from the experience of these efforts. It is intended to help program administrators and their partners plan, operate, and evaluate residential energy efficiency programs.

In recent years, hundreds of communities have been working to promote energy efficiency upgrades in homes and other buildings, through programs such as the Better Buildings Neighborhood Program, Home Performance with ENERGY STAR, utility-sponsored programs, and others. The Better Buildings Residential Program Solution Center is a repository for key lessons, resources, and knowledge collected from the experience of these efforts. It is intended to help program administrators and their partners plan, operate, and evaluate residential energy efficiency programs.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in partnership with Oak Ridge National Laboratory will develop insulation that is 2 to 4 times more efficient than conventional materials and at a comparable installed cost. This insulation technology has the potential of reaching an installed cost of $2.00 per square foot for R-12/inch and targets a technical potential of 1.7 quads.

Oak Ridge National Laboratory will develop a high-impact heating, ventilation, air conditioning, and refrigeration (HVAC&R) technology that can be used in many applications. This technology could lead to 0.7 - 1.1 quads of energy savings.

Sandia National Laboratories will develop a vapor compression cycle architecture. This technology can lead to an estimated 20% decrease in energy consumption in air conditioners and even greater savings when used as a heat pump in cold climates.

The Association of Bay Area Governments will perform modeling analysis in nine Bay Area counties to help small and medium businesses achieve the cost effective energy efficiency improvements. The BayREN Integrated Commercial Retrofits project will modify and enhance existing open source tools to perform large-scale building energy modeling analysis on commercial buildings throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.

Cree will develop a versatile, low-cost, low profile LED light-module architecture that facilitates the assembly of a variety of high-efficacy, broad-area LED luminaires. This lightweight architecture will be applicable to numerous high-efficiency, broad-area LED luminaires and will ultimately reduce the cost per lumen of LED lighting.

Cree, Inc. will develop a low-cost, high-efficiency LED architecture through modification to the conventional LED fabrication process flow. These new processes can be deployed in a variety of LED production lines, leading to reduced lighting energy use.

International Center for Appropriate and Sustainable Technology will expand its one-stop-shop model to address the Small Commercial Apartment Property market with deeper retrofit. Using the model is expected to cut energy use by 20-30% in small commercial apartment properties, reduce individual building utility bills by $3,100 annually, and create 200 jobs.

The Building America Space Conditioning Standing Technical Committee and Expert Meeting reports identified high relative humidity as one of three issues with the highest technical priority for ensuring comfort in low-load homes. As such, the primary objective of this project is to evaluate factors that can contribute to high relative humidity in a home (variations in internal loads, equipment sizing, and equipment setup) and quantify their relative magnitude of impact on indoor relative humidity. A technical white paper will assess the sensitivity latent and sensible gains have on comfort and recommended system sizing. This will inform R&D needs for future BA/BTO work, provide actionable information to manufacturers on the equipment needs of low-load homes (see related project, Assessing the Market and Space-Conditioning Needs of Low-Load Homes), and provide system design and sizing guidance to contractors.

enVerid Systems will demonstrate modular air treatment systems that use less energy to remove indoor air pollutants, such as carbon dioxide, in order to drive widespread adoption of this technology. This approach could reduce the energy consumption in commercial and public buildings by up to 50%.

Ecology Action of Santa Cruz will develop a platform for energy efficiency program administrators that offers a comprehensive set of energy-saving measures, integrated financing tools, and expedited project measurement and verification via a contractor-driven delivery model. The platform seeks to average at least 20% energy savings per building.

The Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator will accelerate the market adoption of super-efficient building technologies by creating a replicable transparent process for taking technologies from pilot to portfolio. The project will measure, document, and publicize the results of highly energy-efficient technology pilot demonstration projects, as well as help property owners define clear metrics to scale up projects.

Lime Energy and partners will implement an energy efficiency service delivery model for small and medium size businesses in low-income communities, aiming to complete more than 1,000 retrofits featuring a performance guarantee and meter-validated savings. The results will create 60 jobs and generate $30 million in economic activity.

Arizona State University will develop efficient and stable white OLEDs that employ a single emissive material. This advancement in OLED technology could lead to building energy use reductions.

This project will research, develop, and demonstrate blue-emitting layers (blue-EML) capable of overcoming the existing device efficiency vs. device stability tradeoff in blue-emitting OLEDs, and enable next-generation stable white OLEDs (WOLEDs).

The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, will develop new strategies for increasing the lifetime of blue phosphorescent OLEDs (PHOLEDs). Longer-life PHOLEDs could provide notable energy and cost savings.

HPC will support the Home Performance with ENERGY STAR Program (HPwES) to engage with stakeholders at regional and national conferences through structured meetings and recognition opportunities; provide business administration, marketing and sales training specific to the home performance industry to program administrator staff and participating contractors; and conduct outreach and develop infrastructure sufficient to increase the number of programs and other market actors that utilize the Building Performance Institutes data collection and transfer standards collectively known as HPXML.

Glint Photonics will develop a stationary, roof-mounted concentrator daylighting system that uses internal optics to track the sun without external movement. This daylighting system will offset 40%-70% of the buildings electricity used for lighting and could potentially generate a total impact of 0.93 quads by 2030.

Home Innovation Research Labs will establish performance criteria and conduct comprehensive testing to evaluate the structural performance of continuous insulation walls with windows of varying shapes and sizes, insulation thicknesses, and installation methods.