Vol. 5 | Issue 1 | December 14, 2021
Success in a Challenging Year
Dear Colleagues,
As 2021 winds to a close, it is my pleasure to introduce another edition of our newsletter and reflect on all the accomplishments that our researchers and support staff have achieved during another challenging year of adapting to COVID-19.
We’re proud to feature some recent awards that our staff have received. First, our collective work in commercial building commissioning was recognized by the prestigious Benner Award. Second, the Building Efficiency Targeting Tool for Energy Retrofits (BETTER) online tool continues to garner recognition for its innovative approach to democratizing fast and cost-effective building retrofit recommendations. Third, Jared Langevin received the Director’s Award for Early Scientific Career Exceptional Achievement. Fourth, Tianzhen Hong was recognized as a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate. And finally, Marco Pritoni was selected as one of three finalists at the Italian Scientists and Scholars in North America Foundation Young Investigator Awards. I invite you to read on and learn more about these accomplishments and what else lies on the horizon for the Building Technology & Urban Systems (BTUS) Division in 2022.
Thank you all for your hard work and continuing contributions to our Division. Our best wishes go out to you and your families this holiday season and into the start of a fresh year.
— Christopher Payne, Energy/Environmental Policy Research Scientist/Engineer; Deputy for Operations, Building Technology & Urban Systems Division; Head of Building & Industrial Applications Department
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Building operations account for a whopping 35% of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions. A free online tool developed by Berkeley Lab with support from the DOE's Building Technologies Office (BTO) — the Building Efficiency Targeting Tool for Energy Retrofits (BETTER) — is helping to bring that number down by virtually evaluating buildings for immediate no- and low-cost energy efficiency upgrades.
A total of 430 organizations have taken advantage of the tool since its initial release in 2020. A California state agency recently used it to audit 450 buildings, avoiding $3.3 million in in-person audit costs and saving taxpayers more than $800,000 annually.
To learn more: eta.lbl.gov/news/article/better-low-cost-energy-retrofits
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CAL-THRIVES Brings Climate Resilience into Community |
Berkeley Lab's CAL-THRIVES project — a toolkit helping to improve heat resilience for Fresno's disadvantaged communities facing some of California's highest utility bills — was featured prominently in this year's Strategic Growth Council Annual Report. Led by Max Wei of the Energy Analysis and Environmental Impacts (EAEI) division, CAL-THRIVES is spearheading outreach within communities to identify residents' most urgent needs and where State programs could make a difference with measures like local cooling centers and building updates. Wei believes direct community work is key to "allow[ing] more partnerships which are needed to meet the challenges of climate change effectively." The team hopes to share the toolkit broadly in the Central Valley to assist even more residents coping with extreme heat waves.
The CAL-THRIVES team consists of a diverse team from Berkeley Lab including: Tianzhen Hong, Ronnen Levinson, Sarah Price, Kaiyu Sun, Max Wei, Henry Willem, Yujie Xu, Zhaoyun Zeng, Wanni Zhang and partners from University of Southern California, West Family Fresno Resource Center, Indicia Consulting, and Haley Gilbert.
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BTUS Providing Technical Support to Women in Data Science Datathon
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The 5th Annual Women in Data Science (WiDS) Datathon will launch in January. BTUS staff Paul Mathew and Travis Walter are providing technical expertise on data sources and analytics related to building energy efficiency, in advance of the WiDS Worldwide Conference on March 7th, 2022. Participants will predict building energy consumption, an important step in mitigating the effects of climate change. The WiDS Datathon aims to inspire women worldwide to get involved in data science, and to create a supportive environment for women to connect with others in their community.
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Overhead Heating Raises Potential Exposure to Contaminants Up to Six-Fold |
As COVID-19 continues to throw focus on proper room ventilation, indoor air researchers at Berkeley Lab used FLEXLAB® to demonstrate how overhead vent heating can create circumstances that result in poor air circulation and potentially ineffective dispersal of airborne contaminants.
Using CO2 as a tracer to track small respiratory aerosols, the team found that when overhead vents (or diffusers) are supplying heated air, it created thermally stratified conditions that block the flow of clean air down to the “breathing zone” in the middle height of the room. As a result, even when people are sitting more than 6 feet from each other, some occupants may be exposed to respiratory aerosols from others at a rate 5 to 6 times higher than if the same room were well mixed.
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Explore FLEXLAB From the Comfort of Home |
FLEXLAB is the most comprehensive and advanced building and grid technologies test facility in the world, allowing researchers to test in real-world conditions. Now, you can take a peek behind the scenes without leaving your office via new self-guided virtual tour experience.
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Berkeley Lab Receives Prestigious Benner Award |
Berkeley Lab received the prestigious Benner Award at this year's Building Commissioning Association Conference, for outstanding leadership in the area of commercial building commissioning. Building commissioning involves a systematic and intensive quality assurance process that ensures greater energy efficiency, enhanced safety, and lower building operation, and maintenance costs.
BTUS researcher Jessica Granderson accepted the award virtually on the Lab's behalf. Contributions were also made by Mary Ann Piette, Evan Mills, Eliot Crowe, and Hannah Kramer.
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Tianzhen Hong Recognized as Highly Cited Researcher |
BTUS Senior Scientist Tianzhen Hong, PhD. was named in this year’s Highly Cited Researchers list by Web of Science. Hong leads a team working on the design and operation of low energy buildings and sustainable urban systems.
The annual list identifies researchers who demonstrate significant influence in their fields through the publication of multiple highly cited papers. See the full list of Berkeley Lab scientists at Web of Science (use Berkeley as a search term).
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Jared Langevin PhD Receives 2021 Early Scientific Career Director's Award |
Jared Langevin, PhD., a Research Scientist in BTUS, was recognized for “innovative modeling and analysis of potential energy, emissions, and cost reductions in U.S. buildings [that] informs the U.S. Department of Energy’s development of policies that can rapidly decarbonize the buildings sector and support national climate change mitigation goals.”
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Marco Pritoni selected as finalist for the ISSNAF Young Scientist Award
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Marco Pritoni has been selected as one of three finalists in the Italian Scientists and Scholars in North America Foundation (ISSNAF) annual Young Investigator Awards. The awards are in various disciplines to outstanding, early-career Italian researchers working in North America in recognition of their significant and innovative contributions to their field of research.
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Save the Date for 2022 BEST Center Annual Institute |
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With the theme “Building Technician Education in a Time of Challenges & Innovation”, the BEST Center will hold its Annual Institute taking place virtually and free to the public on January 5-7, 2022. This event will highlight legislative and international sustainability efforts, innovations in the field of energy efficiency and Building Automation Systems, and strategies and opportunities for educators and industry.
Speakers from BTUS include Mary Ann Piette, Jessica Granderson, Cindy Regnier, Jared Langevin, Ronnen Levinson, Iain Walker, Marco Pritoni, Armando Casilllas, and Eliot Crowe. Other Berkeley Lab speakers include Jennifer Holm, Nihar Shah, John Elliott, Raphael Vitti and Spencer Dutton, as well as California Energy Commission (CEC) Commissioner Andrew McAllister and Department of Energy (DOE) Madeline Salzman.
Co-hosted by BEST and Berkeley Lab, this premier event is attended by faculty, students, and technical professionals aspiring to improve the knowledge and practice of high-performance building operations.
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National Energy Storage Summit Set for March 8-9, 2022 |
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Meeting our nation's energy and climate goals will require advancements in energy storage. Berkeley Lab is hosting the National Energy Storage Summit on March 8-9, 2022 to harness science, technology, and policy to accelerate energy storage solutions for our nation. This virtual public summit will convene and connect national and regional thought leaders across industry, government, communities, and the research enterprise to catalyze solutions and partnerships around specific challenges in this area, and enable our nation’s just transition to a clean, affordable, and resilient energy future, in line with the goals of our Berkeley Lab Energy Storage Center. Many thanks to the more than 75 Lab staff on the event Steering Committee and Execution Committee who are helping to make this event a success.
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Digitizing the delivery of building control sequences |
Tools and emerging standards pioneered by the OpenBuildingControl project team will enable a performance-based digital control delivery process that ensures that buildings are controlled as specified by the designer, and that high-performance sequences can easily be shared among project teams. A recent publication in Energy explains the current process for performance evaluation, specification, deployment and commissioning of building control sequences and a new proposed standard, ASHRAE 231P "A Control Description Language for Building Environmental Control Sequences".
Wetter, M., Ehrlich, P., Gautier, A., Grahovac, M., Haves, P., Hu, J., Prakash, A., Robin, D. and Zhang, K. OpenBuildingControl: Digitizing the control delivery from building energy modeling to specification, implementation and formal verification. Energy, Volume 238, Part A, January 2022.
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Building optimization testing framework (BOPTEST) for simulation-based benchmarking of control strategies in buildings. |
The development of new building HVAC control algorithms is on the rise due to need for energy efficiency and operational flexibility. This paper presents the Building Optimization Testing Framework (BOPTEST) and associated software for simulation-based benchmarking of building HVAC control algorithms and demonstrates its usage to benchmark a Model Predictive Control strategy.
Blum, D, Arroyo, J., Huang, S., Drgoňa, J., Jorissen, F., Taxt Walnum, H., Chen,Y., Benne, K., Vrabie, D., Wetter, M., and Helsen, L. Building optimization testing framework (BOPTEST) for simulation-based benchmarking of control strategies in buildings. Journal of Building Performance Simulation, 14(5), p. 586-610, 2021.
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Other Recent Publications
Less, B., Walker, I.S., Nuria Casquero-Modrego, N., and Rainer, L.I. The Cost of Decarbonization and Energy Upgrade Retrofits for US Homes. 2021. 2001432
buildings.lbl.gov/publications/cost-decarbonization-and-energy
Sun, K., Zhang, W., Zeng, Z., Levinson, R.M., Wei, M. and Hong, T. Passive cooling designs to improve heat resilience of homes in underserved and vulnerable communities. Energy and Buildings 252 (2021) 111383.
Luo, N., Pritoni, M., and Hong, T. An overview of data tools for representing and managing building information and performance data. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 147 (2021) 111224.
Chen, Y., Lin, G., Crowe, E., and Granderson, J. Development of a Unified Taxonomy for HVAC System Faults. Energies 14 (2021).
See more:
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Mary Ann Piette, Division Director, Building Technology & Urban Systems
Paul Mathew, Acting Deputy for Research Programs
Christopher Payne, Deputy for Operations
Erin Harbin, Principal Administrator
Karyn Houston, Communications Manager
1 Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, CA 94720
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Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (Berkeley Lab) is located in the Berkeley Hills near UC Berkeley and conducts scientific research on behalf of the United States Department of Energy (DOE). It is managed and operated by the University of California (UC). The Laboratory overlooks the University of California, 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 13 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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