Tag Archives: Energy Management

New Boston Start-up Tracks Multifamily Residential Energy Efficiency “Score”

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wego_screen_shotWegoWise Inc., which provides energy analytics to private property owners and public housing entities, last week launched WegoScore, a rating system that assesses buildings in three areas, energy, water and carbon and then spits out a score between one and 100.

Source: www.bizjournals.com

>” […] “We are focusing on a universal approach with meaningful reductions,” WegoWise founder and CTO Barun Singh said of the platform.

With the water crisis in California and with 39 percent of carbon dioxide coming from buildings, property owners and public housing agencies are making energy-saving retrofits and want to market what they’ve done.

Those buildings that reach a high rating are issued certificates and decals to let the world know they are more efficient. Maloney Properties Inc., a Wellesley-based real estate management, sales and construction firm with 350 buildings, is featuring its decal proudly. Other area companies include Peabody Properties in Braintree and Homeowners Rehab, based in Cambridge.

The score not only brings awareness to a building’s efficiency, it also provides a way for property owners to market the value of the work completed in their buildings to perspective tenants who are concerned about the environment, Singh said. And the stickers are a fun way to market their accomplishments.

After using WegoWise, Maloney Properties was able to find $2.5 million in 2014 retrofits and expects to save 10 to 20 percent on utility costs related to the retrofits annually. John Magee, an assistant facilities director at Maloney, said the real estate company has been looking for a way to market the value of its properties. And now, the WegoScore will enable it to do that.

With the $4.9 million in funding it has raised from Boston Community Capital, WegoWise was able to build a portfolio of 23,000 multifamily buildings covering more than 600 million square feet. With all of the data that WegoWise has collected since its launch in 2010, coming up with a rating system would be a simple solution, right? Not exactly, according Singh.

Launching WegoScore was an expensive and lengthy process for the 25-person company, he said. Before launching the rating system, Singh said he wanted to be sure that had enough data to come up with a score that was meaningful.

“The end result is a straight-forward algorithm,” he said.

The WegoScore is currently only available for multifamily buildings, according to the company. Scores will be refreshed on a weekly basis and stickers are awarded twice a year.

In addition to gaining interest from its existing customers, venture-backed WegoWise is also garnering the attention of other potential partners including banks, who could use the score as a way to get a sense of the building and decide whether or not to lend to them, and insurance providers that would make decisions based on the building’s efficiency score and other factors. […]”<

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University to Install Combined Heat and Power Plant for Energy Savings and Climate Goals

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“Construction is will soon begin on a $96 million combined heat and power (CHP) plant in another aging facility near the river’s edge that will dramatically cut the campus’ carbon footprint while driving down the cost of energy”

Source: www.midwestenergynews.com

>” […] The project, in the 1912-vintage Old Main Utility Building, will produce enough steam to heat the entire campus and meet about half of its electricity demand.

CHP and carbon reductions

CHP will be a major tactic in the goal of reducing the University’s carbon emissions by 50 percent by 2020, said Shane Stennes, who serves as the University Services’ sustainability coordinator. The Southeast Steam Plant, itself a CHP facility, mainly used natural gas but still had a small measure of coal in its fuel mix, along with oat hulls.

“The carbon reduction is partly due to a change in fuel but mostly a result of increased efficiency,” Stennes said. The ability to use the waste heat from the electricity generation process is the real reason the University will see carbon emissions plummet, he added.

“From the sustainability point of view this plant is the right thing to do,” he said, noting that in 2008 the University’s campus system agreed to a net zero scenario in the American College and University Presidents’ Climate Commitment.

CHP is on a bit of a roll. President Barack Obama signed an executive order in 2012 promoting wider adoption of CHP and the state Department of Commerce recently held stakeholders’ meetings on the issue to determine how the state might help in moving forward projects.

The potential was described in a Commerce policy brief associated with the stakeholder meetings: “Power generation waste heat in Minnesota is nearly equal to the total requirement for heat energy in buildings and industry.” […]

Minnesota has at latest count 55 CHP systems in the state, according to the ICF International.

Reasons for CHP at the U

A campus CHP comes with another advantage by creating an “island” of energy independence should a regional blackout hit. Many major Midwest and coastal universities have CHP in part to rely less on power grids that are vulnerable to major storms or other weather maladies, he said.

“We see CHP as a way to be competitive with other schools and to protect research if we had a catastrophe,” he said.

The need for more boilers, said Malmquist, stems from growing demand for power. Although the nearly dozen new buildings constructed in the last few years meet rigorous energy efficiency standards they tend to demand more power due to their function as research centers.

The Biomedical Discovery District, a new physics laboratory, technology classroom and other science-related buildings, as well as a new residence hall, have added square footage for steam and electricity, he said.

“The buildings we’re putting up today are more energy intensive than the ones we’ve been taking down,” said Malmquist. […]”<

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$200m Demand Management Program Approved in NYC to Defer $1 billion SubStation to 2026

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The NYPSC approved Con Ed of New York’s proposed $200 million Brooklyn/Queens Demand Management Program that would relieve overloads in the city.

Source: www.rtoinsider.com

>” […] Con Ed’s proposed Brooklyn/Queens Demand Management Program is consistent with the state’s “Reforming the Energy Vision” program to restructure the electricity market with greater reliance on technology and distributed resources, the commission said. “The commission is making a significant step forward toward a regulatory paradigm where utilities incorporate alternatives to traditional infrastructure investment when considering how to meet their planning and reliability needs,” the order states.

Commission Chair Audrey Zibelman added that because of the recent D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals decision striking down federal jurisdiction over demand response in wholesale markets, it’s important for state regulators to set market rules for that resource.

Con Ed said the feeders serving the Brownsville No. 1 and 2 substations began to experience overloads in 2013 and would be overloaded by 69 MW for 40 to 48 hours during the summer by 2018. A new substation, transmission subfeeders and a switching station would cost $1 billion, according to the company. The PSC accepted the company’s estimate of the DM Program’s costs and ordered a cap of $200 million.

The program would include 52 MW of non-traditional utility-side and customer-side relief, including about 41 MW of energy efficiency, demand management and distributed generation, and 11 MW of utility-side battery energy storage. This will include incentives to upgrade building “envelopes,” improve air conditioning efficiency of equipment, encourage greater use of energy controls, and establish energy storage, distributed generation or microgrids.

This will be supplemented by approximately 17 MW of traditional utility infrastructure investment, consisting of 6 MW of capacitors and 11 MW of load transfers from the affected area to other networks.  […]”<

 

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Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) Heat Recovery Technology For Ships

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The company has developed a marine Organic Rankine Cycle (ORC) system for waste heat recovery and power generation that could reduce fuel consumption by up to 10%.

Source: www.motorship.com

“> […] Enertime’s ORC system produces between 500kW and 1MW of electrical power depending on the available amount of heat. The unit is based on a tailor-made axial turbine and is specifically designed to work in the marine environment. The development work has involved shipyards, shipowners and a classification society, says Mr David.

“Compared to a steam power cycle, ORC systems need very low maintenance, display good part-load efficiency, high availability and can be operated without permanent monitoring,” he said. “Daily operation and maintenance can be carried out without specific qualification.”

The ORC system can work with any kind of heat source. The unit can recover heat from a number of different sources singly or in combination including low-temperature jacket cooling from engines, steam or thermal oil systems and pressurised hot water. Exhaust gas from engines or auxiliaries is the main available heat on board ships, and it can be collected through an exhaust gas heat exchanger and brought to the ORC unit using steam, pressurised water or thermal oil. […]

The ORC layout is flexible and the unit can also be installed as a retrofit where it is possible to adapt the layout of the machinery to specific constraints by splitting it on different levels, for example.

“This kind of system would be very interesting for bulk carriers, small to medium size oil tankers, ferry boats, small container ships… with payback time between two to five years,” […]”<

 

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Retro-fit NYC Office Building Achieve’s LEED-EB Gold Rating

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A $9 million retrofit that included $1.5 million in improvements that can be directly or indirectly linked to energy and water savings has elevated the building to a select group that includes 1440 Broadway, 498 Seventh Avenue and 345 Hudson Street.

Source: www.rew-online.com

>” […] Built in 1919, the 22-story tower with a block-through arcade of service shops for tenants, has undergone a plethora of changes to improve sustainability to achieve Gold Certification that include reducing water use by over 25 percent annually, saving over 536,800 gallons a year; recycling over 79 percent of ongoing consumable waste; recycling 100 percent of electronics waste; achieving Energy Star Label and Energy Star Scores of 86 and 83 in 2013 and 2014, respectively; and purchasing green power and carbon offsets from US-generated wind energy and landfill gas capture projects representing over 50% of the property’s two-year energy use

“The LEED-EB Gold Certification at 28 West 44th Street demonstrates APF Properties’ ongoing commitment to providing its tenants with a sustainable, modern and healthy environment in which to work,” said John Fitzsimmons, vice president/director of Real Estate Operations at APF Properties.

“Our overall goal is to achieve Energy Star and LEED Certification throughout our commercial office building portfolio in New York, Philadelphia and Houston.

[…]

LEED was developed to define and clarify the term “green building” by establishing a common standard of measurement — a benchmark for the design, construction, and operation of high-performance buildings.

To earn LEED certification, a building must meet certain prerequisites and performance criteria within five key areas of environmental health: 1) sustainable site development, 2) water savings, 3) energy efficiency, 4) materials selection, and 5) indoor environmental quality. Projects are awarded Certified, Silver, Gold, or Platinum certification, depending on the number of credits achieved.”<

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Energy Efficiency, Smart Buildings & Wireless Control Systems

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Energy efficient technology and services for the building sector will double by 2022, according to a new report …

Source: www.climatecontrolnews.com.au

>”[…] Since buildings account for a large portion of national energy consumption, most of the governments in the Asia Pacific region have taken steps to promote energy management and energy efficiency in both new construction and existing buildings. […]

“With about 40 per cent of the world’s building stock, Asia Pacific represents a major portion of global real estate,” he said.

“Growing concerns about air pollution in Chinese cities, in particular, is expected to further drive investment in energy efficiency technologies to reduce China’s demand for coal-based electricity.

“The market for energy efficient buildings is expected to double in the next eight years, reaching nearly $92 billion in annual revenue by 2022.”

The largest segment of the energy efficient buildings market in Asia Pacific today is advanced lighting […]

“The commercial buildings sector in the region will experience a significant increase in the adoption of these products in the coming years,” Bloom said. Entitled“Energy Efficient Buildings: Asia Pacific”, the report examines the trends for energy efficient building technology and services in the Asia Pacific region.

It covers three main areas of technology – HVAC, energy efficient lighting, and commercial building automation – as well as the energy service company (ESCO) sector.

The convergence of building automation, information technology, and wireless communications is another area of growth identified by Navigant Research.

A separate report examines the state of the global wireless building controls industry, including global market forecasts for wireless node unit shipments and revenue through 2023.

Wireless controls can be used to link devices found in a variety of building systems, including heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC), lighting, fire and life safety, and security and access.

In addition, they often provide networked control in buildings or areas where wired controls are simply too challenging or expensive to install.

Worldwide revenue from wireless control systems for smart buildings is expected to grow from $97 million annually in 2014 to $434 million in 2023.  […]

While the adoption and deployment of wireless systems based on standard technologies and protocols, such as Wi-Fi, Zigbee, and EnOcean, are increasing, most wireless devices and control networks used today utilize proprietary, vendor-specific wireless communications technology.

That is likely to change as the demand for interoperability grows, according to the “Wireless Control Systems for Smart Buildings” report. “<

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ACEEE Recommends Demand Response as a Strategy to Conquer Peak Demand for Utilities

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By Steven Nadel

” … a potential emerging trend that could have a large impact on many utilities: the reduction of the traditional mid-afternoon peak, and the growth of an evening peak. (Peak is the time when demand for power is highest.)”

Source: aceee.org

>” […] In many regions, evening peaks have been growing, as more consumers install air conditioners and operate them when they get home from work. But two other factors are augmenting this trend. First and foremost is the growth in consumer-owned photovoltaic systems. These systems generate the most power on sunny afternoons, which is about when the traditional early afternoon peak occurs. But when the sun goes down, extra power is quickly needed to replace this solar power.  […]

There are many ways to address the growing evening peak, including the following:

  1. Energy efficiency, particularly measures that reduce the evening peak such as efficient lamps, water heaters, stoves and ovens.
  2. Smart controllers that minimize energy use during the evening peak. To provide just one example, a smart refrigerator would not turn on the defrost cycle during this period and might even turn off the main compressor for a few minutes.
  3. Likewise, smart charging systems for electric vehicles could be used, such as a new system recently demonstrated by the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), working with a consortium of utilities and auto manufacturers.
  4. Expanded use of demand-response programs to lower the new peak (and coordination of these efforts with energy efficiency programs).
  5. Time-of-use rates and/or demand charges that raise the price of power use during peak times and a lower them at off-peak times.
  6. Use of energy storage at a system, community, or end-user level. Storage able to provide power for several hours could be very useful.Fast ramp-up generation to serve the evening peak and other times when renewable energy production plummets, for example when the wind dies down. Hydro is ideal, but fast ramp-up gas units are now entering the market.

In my opinion, the time of the peak will change in many regions. The shift will be gradual in most areas, so we have time to address it. Rather than trying to stop this change by restricting photovoltaic systems, we’ll be better off figuring out how to manage it, […]”<

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‘Demand Response’ is ‘Disruptive Technology’ Shutting Down Power Plants

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FirstEnergy Corp. has a traditional view of wholesale electricity markets: They’re a competition between iron-in-the-ground facilities that can put megawatts on the grid when those megawatts are needed. Think coal plants, nuclear reactors and hydroelectric dams. Missing from the definition is a consumer’s promise to turn off the lights when the grid is stressed — so-called demand response. Instead of creating energy during peak times, demand response resources conserve it, freeing up megawatts […]

Source: powersource.post-gazette.com

>” […]The idea is not new and has been expanding in the territory of PJM Interconnection, a Valley Forge-based grid operator that manages the flow of electricity to 13 states, including Pennsylvania.

FirstEnergy, which owns power plants and utility companies across several states, wants PJM to abandon the demand response concept.

The Ohio-based energy company says demand response, which doesn’t require any kind of capital commitment, is “starving” traditional generation out of its rightful revenue in wholesale markets.

“We feel that it’s going to lead to even more premature closures of power plants,” said Doug Colafella, a spokesman for the firm.

Specifically, FirstEnergy is fighting to get demand response kicked out of PJM’s annual capacity auction, which ensures there’s enough electricity resources to meet projected power demand three years in advance. The auction establishes a single clearing price that will be paid to all successful bidders, like a retainer fee, in exchange for their promise to be available to be called upon three years from now.

During the May auction, which set capacity prices for the 2017-2018 year, the clearing price was $120 a day for each megawatt of electricity bidders committed. About 6 percent, or about 11,000 megawatts, of the capacity secured came from demand response.

FirstEnergy’s Bruce Mansfield coal-fired power plant in Beaver County failed to clear the auction. The company has since postponed upgrades to the facility, which could jeopardize its functioning beyond 2016.

Capacity payments are a stable source of revenue for baseload generation plants, Mr. Colafella said, and a price signal to the market about which way demand is headed, giving generators some indication about whether new facilities will be necessary and profitable.

Demand response distorts that dynamic, he said.

Since May, FirstEnergy has intensified its efforts to drive demand response out of PJM’s markets, having seized on a related court case involving the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

“FirstEnergy’s business model is that electricity consumption has been flattening, so they want to take a larger share of the market and how do you take a larger share? You bulldoze everybody out,” said Mei Shibata, CEO of The Energy Agency, a marketing and communications firm and co-author of a recent report on the market for demand response in the U.S. for GreenTech Media Research.

In May, the D.C. Circuit Court vacated a rule created by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in 2011 that said demand response should be treated the same way as power plants in wholesale energy markets. That meant demand response providers could offer to shut down a day in advance, when grid operators book electricity for the following day, and get the same price as megawatts from generation.

An electric power industry group sued the FERC claiming that the call to shut off electricity in exchange for payment is a retail choice and retail falls exclusively within state jurisdiction, not federal. The court agreed, setting in motion FirstEnergy’s challenge to demand response in capacity markets, which were not addressed by the court decision. If demand response is a retail product in one context, then it’s a retail product in all, the logic goes.

The same day the court issued its decision, FirstEnergy filed a lawsuit asking a judge to order PJM to recalculate the results of its May capacity auction stripping out demand response.

PJM objected. The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, which intervened in that case, charged FirstEnergy with “jumping the gun” on its logic and called its proposal an “unprecedented and wholly unnecessary disruption of the capacity market auction process.”

Even if demand response is excluded from the daily wholesale market as the court decision wills, the market for this resource will continue to expand, said Ms. Shibata.

If, however, FirstEnergy succeeds in kicking demand response out of the capacity market, “that would be a much bigger deal,” she said.

PJM leads the nation in demand response resources, according to Ms. Shibata’s research, and anything that happens to demand response at PJM would likely trickle down to the other grid operators around the country. […]”<

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CAN NYC REDUCE ITS CARBON FOOTPRINT 90% BY 2050?

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“The building sector is the source of 75 percent of New York City’s greenhouse gas emissions. 90 by 50’s modeling of eight typical building types shows that heating and cooling loads can be reduced through retrofit measures to a point where all thermal loads can be met by heat pumps, eliminating building fuel use. The resulting electric energy used in 2050, supplied by carbon-free sources, will be slightly more than today’s, while peak demand will increase significantly. “

RO Engineers & Architects's avatarRO Engineers & Architects

In an article by urban green council,

“The building sector is the source of 75 percent of New York City’s greenhouse gas emissions. 90 by 50’s modeling of eight typical building types shows that heating and cooling loads can be reduced through retrofit measures to a point where all thermal loads can be met by heat pumps, eliminating building fuel use. The resulting electric energy used in 2050, supplied by carbon-free sources, will be slightly more than today’s, while peak demand will increase significantly. “

How will we meet this goal when there are a number of behavioral, institutional and infrustructural issues?

Let’s name a few…..

  1. The NYC subway still has outdated lighting with T12 with magnetic ballasts
  2. A large # of residential buildings the tenants leave their window a/c units installed year round which results in heat loss
  3. Alternate side parking- numerous places throughout the city people sit and idle their…

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California’s PG&E Takes Grid Energy Storage to the Distribution Substation

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California’s utilities are building a 1.3-gigawatt energy storage system, one piece at a time.

Source: www.greentechmedia.com

>” […] PG&E’s solicitation (PDF) is one of the first rounds from the 74 megawatts of storage projects the utility is set to announce by December. That, in turn, is part of the first procurement round for the state’s 1.3-gigawatt mandate for storage by 2021, which is requiring PG&E, Southern California Edison, and San Diego Gas & Electric to sign up about 200 megawatts of cost-effective grid storage by year’s end.

[…]

Some of these projects will be aggregating distributed, behind-the-meter batteries to help solve local grid needs. But PG&E’s substation RFO is aimed strictly at utility-owned and -operated battery systems — which makes sense, because PG&E is justifying its cost by showing how much it saves by not building or upgrading new substations.

[…]

PG&E’s cost-benefit calculation for these projects is fairly straightforward — subtract the cost of upgrading the substation from the cost of the battery system. Still, the duty cycle being asked of these energy storage systems (ESS) is pretty severe, according to the RFO:

“[T]his is defined as discharging the ESS from 100% state of charge (SOC) at guaranteed maximum power for the guaranteed discharge duration, then charging it to back to 100% SOC and subsequently discharging it at guaranteed maximum power for half of the guaranteed discharge duration, and finally charging it back to 100% SOC during the course of a single day. The ESS shall be capable of performing the guaranteed site specific duty cycle for up to 365 days per year excluding time for planned maintenance and/or forced outages.”

[…]

Asset or investment deferral of this kind is actually a significant route to market for existing battery-based grid storage systems, with projects around the world allowing stressed-out substations to keep operating for years longer by cushioning the peaks with stored battery power. In fact, PG&E has a 2-megawatt project in Vacaville that’s serving that purpose for a transmission substation.

But the new projects are some of the first targeting the medium- and low-voltage distribution grid, where the rules for batteries are different. California regulators are asking the state’s big utilities to come up with ways to value distributed energy assets — solar panels, batteries, plug-in vehicles, smart thermostats and other grid-edge systems — in their multi-billion-dollar, multi-year distribution grid investment plans.

PG&E didn’t disclose how much investment it’s hoping to defer with these new projects, or how much it planned to pay for them. But the numbers could be significant. In New York City, utility Consolidated Edison is proposing a plan to replace $1 billion in substation upgrades with a mix of energy efficiency, demand response, and distributed energy resources like rooftop solar and energy storage.”<

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