Vol. 5 | Issue 4 | September 2022 | | |
Building Resilience
As we move away from the warm summer temperatures and into the fall season it is wonderful to see our division research focused on resilience by deploying cool surface technologies, planning for climate smart power systems and developing resilient cooling through geothermal district energy systems. Many of these projects are giving special attention to communities that are most vulnerable to climate change, in our state, country and around the world.
In this newsletter we also feature two new R&D 100 Award Winning software platforms supporting city scale building performance improvements.
We hope you enjoy reading about the wide-ranging research that Building Technology & Urban System (BTUS) researchers are performing to make the world a better place.
— Christian Kohler, Head of Building Technologies Department, BTUS Division
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The Science of Cool: How UC research is helping cities cope with heat waves
By the middle of this century, temperatures in some California cities are expected to be in the triple digits for a third of the year. Researchers and scientists from across the University of California and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (Berkeley Lab) are working on a range of solutions to help cities and people cope. Many of those interventions focus on delivering relief to the low-income neighborhoods that are most at risk during heat waves. There is also a growing body of research aimed at developing new materials and techniques to help cities cool.
“There is urgency to this work because it’s only getting hotter,” said Berkeley Lab scientist Ronnen Levinson, who leads the Heat Island Group, a research unit focused on developing and testing solutions to urban heat.
Read the article at: universityofcalifornia.edu/news/science-cool-how-uc-research-helping-cities-cope-heat-waves
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Extreme heat kills inequitably: Reflective pavements can help, but city action is required
Extreme heat is the deadliest natural hazard in the United States.
Between 1992 and 2021, extreme heat killed an average of 148 people every year. In the same 30-year period, floods killed about 88 annually while hurricanes killed 45 yearly.
Read more at thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/3621620-extreme-heat
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1-800-DECARBONIZE-MY-BUILDING
There are 5.5 million commercial buildings in the U.S. Why are only 700 of them net-zero? We have the technology to slash carbon emissions from commercial buildings, which account for 16% of all U.S. emissions. And retrofitting commercial buildings saves money and energy for building owners. So what gives?
In the podcast, The Big Switch, host Dr. Melissa Lott talks with Berkeley Lab staff scientist, Paul Mathew. He explains the reasons for this “yawning adoption gap” and offers potential solutions.
Read or listen at
eta.lbl.gov/news/getting-commercial-buildings-net-zero
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Q&A: Planning Climate Smart Power Systems | |
Unprecedented heat waves, storms, and wildfires are pushing electrical grids in the United States to their limits. To work towards a safe and reliable power system in the coming years, utilities will need to factor the potential effects of climate change and extreme climate change-driven events into their plans for power distribution, generation capacity and back-up energy storage, and infrastructure repair and replacement.
But how do you plan for the future given the wide range of plausible ways that climate change can impact “the new normal” and extreme weather events? Liyang Wang and Andrew Jones, two scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), are part of a team working to provide practical tools and guidance for grid planners. In this Q&A, Wang and Jones share findings of a review study that identifies how best practices in planning for uncertainty can be applied in the electricity sector, and discuss an upcoming project supported by the California Energy Commission that will evaluate alternative grid resilience strategies under a comprehensive range of climate futures.
Their study is part of the ongoing Department of Energy-funded HyperFACETS project that is developing new ways of evaluating and producing climate information in close collaboration with stakeholders.
Liyang Wang is a senior research associate in the BTUS Division of Berkeley Lab’s Energy Technologies Area.
Andrew Jones is a staff scientist in the Climate and Ecosystem Sciences Division of the Earth and Environmental Sciences Area. Both are affiliated with the Energy and Resources Group at UC Berkeley.
Read more at newscenter.lbl.gov/2022/08/04/climate-smart-power-systems
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Seven innovative technologies from Berkeley Lab have been honored with a 2022 R&D 100 Award. The award, presented by R&D Magazine and selected by an independent panel of judges, recognizes the year’s 100 most innovative and disruptive technology products from industry, academia, and government-sponsored research.
Below are descriptions of the technologies awarded from the BTUS division:
Read more at buildings.lbl.gov/news/rd-100-awards-honor-lab-innovations
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City Buildings, Energy, and Sustainability (CityBES) Web Tool for Climate Change Strategies
Buildings generate 39% of global CO2 emissions, but evaluating and prioritizing cost-effective technical solutions for individual buildings at city scale poses a significant challenge for city stakeholders. CityBES is a free, powerful modeling and analysis tool that enables quick and quantitative assessments of actionable recommendations for decarbonizing buildings and improving their thermal resilience against extreme weather at the urban scale. CityBES builds upon open city datasets, international data standards, the powerful EnergyPlus simulation engine, a library of mitigation and adaptation measures, and 3D-GIS visualization to inform decision making on city buildings, energy, and sustainability.
Read More: rdworldonline.com/rd-100-2022-winner/city-buildings-energy-and-sustainability-citybes-web-tool-for-climate-change-strategies
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The SEED Platform: Decarbonizing Cities Through Robust Data Management
Managing building performance data (such as required by a benchmarking ordinance) can be costly and time consuming for states, local governments and other organizations. A Berkeley Lab team, in collaboration with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, has developed building energy efficiency data management software called the Standard Energy Efficiency Data Platform (SEED). It is an open-source software application designed to manage building performance data; it helps users combine data from multiple sources, clean and validate it, and generate queries and reports.
Investigators: Paul Mathew, Robin Mitchell, and Nicholas Long (National Renewable Energy Laboratory)
For information about licensing the above technologies, contact ipo@lbl.gov
Read More: rdworldonline.com/rd-100-2022-winner/the-seed-platform-decarbonizing-cities-through-robust-data-management
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2022 International COBEE Women in STEM Award
Principal Scientific Engineering Associate Kaiyu Sun was selected for the 2022 Women in STEM Award by the International Conference on Building Energy & Environment (COBEE). The winning research was presented as a conference paper Exploring Decarbonization and Clean Energy Pathways for Disadvantaged Communities in California. California has a state-wide goal of carbon neutrality by 2045. Decarbonization for disadvantaged communities (DACs) poses extra challenges due to financial, informational, language, and other barriers. This paper presents the methodology, results, and analysis of energy efficiency measures to save energy, reduce CO2 emission, and promote clean energy access at the district scale for two DACs in Fresno, California.
Read the paper at:
buildings.lbl.gov/publications/exploring-decarbonization-and-clean
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2022 IBPSA-USA Emerging Contributor Award
Research Scientist Jared Langevin won the 2022 International Building Performance Simulation Association (IBPSA-USA) Emerging Contributor Award. This award recognizes an individual at the beginning of their career who has demonstrated potential for significant contributions to the field of building simulation.
Read more at:
eta.lbl.gov/people/jared-langevin
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Resilient cooling through geothermal district energy system | |
Decarbonization and resilience to heat waves have recently become high priorities for building and district energy systems. Geothermal coupled district heating and cooling systems that operate a water loop near ground temperature gain increasing adoption to support decarbonization. In these systems, vapor-compression machines, distributed in the energy transfer stations, lift the temperature up or down to the needs of the particular building. In principle, these systems can provide low-power, free cooling from the geothermal bore field during heat waves when electricity is often scarce.
Gautier, A., Wetter, M. and Sulzer, M., 2022. Resilient cooling through geothermal district energy system. Applied Energy, 325, p.119880.
doi.org/10.1016/j.apenergy.2022.119880
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Other Recent Publications | |
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Regnier, C., Mathew, P., Shackelford, J., Lee, S., Robinson, A. and Walter, T., 2022. Multi-technology building system retrofits for utility incentive programs: Savings, costs and baseline considerations. Energy and Buildings, 270, p.112270.
buildings.lbl.gov/publications/multi-technology-building-system
Kim, D., Wang, Z., Brugger, J., Blum, D., Wetter, M., Hong, T. and Piette, M., 2022. Site demonstration and performance evaluation of MPC for a large chiller plant with TES for renewable energy integration and grid decarbonization. Applied Energy, 321, p.119343.
buildings.lbl.gov/publications/site-demonstration-and-performance
Helmns, D., Casillas, A., Prakash, A., Blum, D., Pritoni, M., Dutton, S., et al, 2022. Heat Pumps with Phase Change Thermal Storage: Flexible, Efficient, and Electrification Friendly. 2022 Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings. Asilomar: ACEEE.
buildings.lbl.gov/publications/heat-pumps-phase-change-thermal
Lin, G., Kramer, H., Nibler, V., Crowe, E. and Granderson, J., 2022. Building Analytics Tool Deployment at Scale: Benefits, Costs, and Deployment Practices. Energies, 15(13), p.4858.
buildings.lbl.gov/publications/building-analytics-tool-deployment
Walker, I., Less, B. and Casquero-Modreg, N., 2022. Pathways to Home Decarbonization. ACEEE 2022 Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings. ACEEE.
buildings.lbl.gov/publications/pathways-home-decarbonization
Above is a smaple of our recent publications, to find more please visit buildings.lbl.gov/publications.
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Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (Berkeley Lab) is located in the Berkeley Hills near University of California (UC) Berkeley and conducts scientific research on behalf of the United States Department of Energy (DOE). The Laboratory overlooks the UC Berkeley.
Berkeley Lab addresses the world’s most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab’s scientific expertise has been recognized with 14 Nobel prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. For more information, visit www.lbl.gov.
DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, see science.energy.gov.
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