Tag Archives: Energy Management

Advanced Controls Devices for HVAC in Buildings shows growth

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Worldwide revenue from advanced HVAC controls is expected to grow from $7 billion annually in 2014 to $11.7 billion in 2023, according to a new report

Source: www.businesswire.com

BOULDER, Colo.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) in commercial buildings typically accounts for roughly 40% of total building energy consumption. While advancements have been made in the efficiency of HVAC equipment, the actual energy consumption of HVAC equipment depends largely on their operation – which can be made much more efficient and less energy-intensive through the application of advanced HVAC controls. […]

“The drive to reduce energy use in commercial buildings has put a spotlight on improving the efficiency of HVAC systems, and HVAC controls retrofits offer a compelling value proposition through reduced energy consumption in existing buildings.”

[…]

New building certification and benchmarking regulations are driving faster retrofits of controls in existing buildings, according to the report, and changing how automation is designed into new buildings. The wider adoption of open standards for controls functions (such as BACnet), and of communications based on the Internet Protocol (IP) suite and Ethernet connectivity, is expected to help bring advanced HVAC technology to a wider market.

[…]

See on Scoop.it – Green Building Operations – Systems & Controls, Maintenance & Commissioning

School to Combine Solar PV Modules with Battery Storage in Belgian Pilot Project

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“Such an energy storage and distribution system can offer a great value, certainly for schools”, says Bert Dekeyzer of npo iD, the organization behind the ‘School of the Future’.

Source: www.solarserver.com

>'”During weekends a school consumes almost no electricity. The energy produced by the solar panels is stored in the batteries. On Monday morning there is a peak consumption: then all the computers and machines are turned on, which requires quite a lot of electricity. If the solar panels supply too little at that time, the batteries can provide the remaining energy. Moreover, a study showed that the energy consumption of a school does not stop after four o’clock in the afternoon. Schools are increasingly used in the evening for sports activities and evening classes. Also in this situation, the batteries can play their part.”

PV, storage combination offers a solution for a possible power shortage

In addition to an optimal and economic usage of solar power, the system can provide a solution for a possible power shortage in Belgium. Because of problems with the Belgian nuclear power plants, various municipalities could get disconnected from the electricity grid. In case of a power disruption, a traditional solar installation does not work anymore. The inverter of a traditional system switches off automatically because of a power failure. The owners of solar modules also have no electricity at that time, and in addition they suffer losses of the power output and any feed-in tariffs from their solar panels during the outage.

The storage system provides a solution. Such an installation combines solar modules with battery storage and intelligent software: if the grid fails, the system provides uninterrupted power for the user from the solar modules and/or batteries. […]”<

 

See on Scoop.it – Green Building Design – Architecture & Engineering

Data Centers and Energy Efficiency

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New analysis suggests there’s still an opportunity to cut power consumption and save billions in 2014.

Source: www.greenbiz.com

>”A new tally by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) suggests there’s still a big opportunity to cut energy usage by 40 percent, saving more than $3.8 billion in 2014 alone.  Put another way, that’s like switching off 39 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity, the equivalent of 14 large, coal-fired power plants.

“Most of the attention is focused on the highly visible hyperscale ‘cloud’ data centers like Google’s and Facebook’s, but they are already very efficient and represent less than 5 percent of U.S. data center electricity consumption,” said Pierre Delforge, NRDC’s director of high-tech energy efficiency. “Our small, medium, corporate and multi-tenant data centers are still squandering huge amounts of energy.”

Here’s the likely outcome: By 2020, U.S. data centers will probably require about 140 kilowatt-hours of electricity to keep online.

The biggest culprits in wasteful IT power consumption are underutilized servers using significant amounts of electricity without performing any useful purpose, according to NRDC.  […]

Figures suggest the average server operates at just 12 percent to 18 percent of its capacity, which means businesses could stand to be far more aggressive about consolidating or virtualizing them. That’s particularly true of the smallest server rooms, ones that crop up with little advance planning.

“The more work a server performs, the more energy-efficient it is—just as a bus uses much less gasoline per passenger when ferrying 50 people than when carrying just a handful,” the analysis notes.

Among the recommended fixes for this persistent problem are the adoption of metrics that provide deeper insight into average server utilization, more public disclosure of data center energy performance information, and “green” data center leases that provide incentives for energy savings.

The reason why these green data center service contracts work, according to the report, is because they create financial incentives for companies to consider their energy use. […]”<

See on Scoop.it – Green Energy Technologies & Development

5 Steps to Designing a Net Zero Energy Building

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traciesimmons's avatardesignrealizedblog

Net zero energy buildings are really just becoming a reality. According to a 2012 Getting to Zero Report by the New Buildings Institute (NBI) and the Zero Energy Commercial Consortium (CBC), 99 commercial buildings have been identified from around the country that are net zero energy performing, zero-energy capable, or are in construction and on their way. And this is just what they know about.

As the industry continues to embark on net zero energy buildings, architecture firms are learning a lot about what it takes to make them reality. San Francisco-based EHDD is one such firm. For nearly a decade they have been designing with net zero in mind.

Sample breakdown of a building&#039;s energy use from EHDD. Sample breakdown of a building’s energy use from EHDD.

According to Brad Jacobson, a Senior Associate at EHDD and recognized leader in sustainable design, “Working on sustainability doesn’t have to be at all about sacrifice. It’s about finding solutions that…

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Energy Efficiency and Renewables Drives Smart Grid Technologies Market – Research & Developments

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The market for smart grid technologies is evolving rapidly as the need for a more responsive, automated power grid rises worldwide.  …

Source: www.navigantresearch.com

>”The fundamental technology for injecting intelligence into the grid has been in existence for years – more than a decade in some cases. However, the past 18 to 24 months have seen accelerating technological advancements and shifting priorities among utility industry stakeholders.

Transmission system upgrades are driven by the need to interconnect offshore or remote wind and solar farms, as well as ongoing electrification across Asia Pacific and developing regions. Falling costs for devices and communications networking, combined with the increasing emphasis on reliability and energy efficiency, will lead to robust growth in the substation and distribution automation (SA and DA) markets. Meanwhile, government mandates, especially in Europe, will drive strong smart meter penetration gains over the next decade. At the same time, utilities are facing more competition than ever and squeezed margins. These issues, along with the proliferation of smart devices in the grid, will drive impressive growth in demand for more powerful utility IT solutions and analytics. Navigant Research forecasts that global smart grid technology revenue will grow from $44.1 billion in 2014 to $70.2 billion in 2023.

This Navigant Research report analyzes the global market for smart grid technologies, with a focus on transmission upgrades, SA, DA, information and operations technology (IT/OT) software and services, and advanced metering infrastructure (AMI). The study provides a detailed analysis of the market drivers, challenges, and trends, as well as regional and country factors, for each smart grid technology segment. Global market forecasts for revenue, broken out by technology, application, component, and region, extend through 2023. The report also provides profiles of key grid infrastructure vendors and includes information on 150-plus other types of companies, major global utilities, and smart grid-related industry associations.

Key Questions Addressed:

Which smart grid technology segments are the largest and how quickly are they expected to grow?

What are the key market drivers and challenges for each smart grid technology segment?

What are the most important new trends affecting the pace of investment in smart grid technologies?

What regional factors are affecting the pace of investment in smart grid technology?

Who are the key vendors in each category of smart grid technology?   […] “<

See on Scoop.it – Green Energy Technologies & Development

VPP – New Models for the Distributed Grid Network

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National Instruments, LocalGrid, and Toronto Hydro pilot the software-defined, peer-to-peer distributed grid architecture.

Source: www.greentechmedia.com

>” […] Because each CompactRIO endpoint is inherently flexible, LocalGrid can provide “protocol conversion which we can update dynamically over the air, analytics that we can update to the system, and run multiple applications on the same device,” he said. This is similar in intent to the kind of field-distributed computing capability that Silver Spring Network’s new SilverLink Sensor Network platform and Cisco’s new IOx platform are opening up to partners, but it’s pretty far ahead of the capabilities of the vast majority of today’s grid edge devices.

In fact, in terms of technology that allows interoperability without a lot of expensive and complex pre-integration work, “The existing players do not have solutions that will do this job,” Leigh said. “They’re not fast enough, they’re not open enough, or they don’t have solutions that are cost-effective enough in the distribution space.”

So far, LocalGrid has connected four sites with a combination of solar PV and wind turbine inverters and metering hardware, and is now in the midst of its second phase of developing custom algorithms for tasks such as detecting faults and forecasting solar and wind generation and loads on distribution circuits, Leigh said. These aren’t necessarily huge challenges for Toronto Hydro’s existing IT infrastructure at pilot scale, “But if we were to multiply that across the network, it’s just not feasible to get all that data to be analyzed into a back-end system,” he said.

As for how to expand LocalGrid’s software capabilities to a broader set of grid endpoints, Leigh cited Cisco’s IOx-enabled grid routers as potential future partners. Other big grid vendors like General Electric, ABB and Siemens “are at different stages starting to open up their systems,” he said. “The question that still has to be worked out is how much third-party development can take place on their new systems.”

That’s the same question that Duke has been asking the grid vendor community, via its plans to open its source code and hardware adapter reference designs to the public. The past half-decade has seen open-source grid systems emerge from simulation software and data management tools to a few real-world grid applications, albeit still in the experimental stage. Perhaps the next half-decade will see the open grid edge platform attain real-world status.”<

The 10 Most Energy-Efficient U.S. States: The Forgotten ‘Fifth Fuel’

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Access to energy in the U.S. — and the effects of generating it — are a national concern.

Duane Tilden‘s insight:

>The Forgotten ‘Fifth Fuel’

Access to energy in the U.S. — and the effects of generating it — are a national concern. Debates persist over the most cost-effective and environmentally friendly mix of nuclear energy, coal, gas and liquid hydrocarbons and renewable sources.

Too often left out of these discussions is the so-called fifth fuel: energy efficiency. States have driven benefits for consumers and the environment with policies that both reduce energy use and encourage economic growth.

The American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) yesterday issued its annual scorecard for each state based on multiple factors, including reductions in greenhouse gas, energy codes for buildings and switching to cleaner fuels.<

See on www.bloomberg.com

Federal Energy Management Program: Online Training – Live & On-Demand – CEU’s

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See on Scoop.it – Green & Sustainable News

FEMP trains Federal agency managers about the latest energy requirements, best practices, and technologies through eTraining Courses, First Thursday Seminars, and webinars.

See on apps1.eere.energy.gov

Boston Leads Ranking of Energy-Efficient U.S. Cities by ACEEE

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A new ranking highlights Boston’s achievements in conserving energy as the Senate debates a bipartisan energy efficiency bill.

Duane Tilden‘s insight:

>ACEEE graded 34 cities for their efforts in five areas: buildings, transportation, energy and water utility programs, local government operations, and community-wide initiatives.  […]

The cities’ leap forward in energy-efficiency efforts has been a stark contrast to the slow movement on Capitol Hill, where the Energy Savings and Industrial Competitiveness Act of 2013, authored by Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-New Hampshire) and Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) has been struggling to move forward.

The bill, […] would require the federal government—the nation’s single largest energy consumer—to update government buildings to improve energy efficiency, institute electricity-saving measures for government computers, and make it easier for agencies to switch to electric and natural-gas-powered vehicles. It also would provide training for workers in how to build more energy-efficient buildings for the private sector, and help finance private-sector renovations for energy efficiency. […]<

See on news.nationalgeographic.com

Developing an Energy Management Program for Your Business

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See on Scoop.it – Green Building Operations – Systems & Controls, Maintenance & Commissioning

Today more than ever, businesses are concerned with maximizing operational efficiency, minimizing costs, and seeking out untapped revenue streams. At the same

Duane Tilden‘s insight:

>Large energy users like many commercial, institutional, and industrial organizations have a unique opportunity to act as a “virtual power plant” while reducing their real-time demand for electricity—and opening up a new revenue stream. This strategy, known as demand response, is not only a cost-free way to reduce energy usage, but also it generates payments for participating businesses simply for being on call.

Demand response providers work with commercial, institutional, and industrial businesses to identify ways for facilities to reduce energy consumption without affecting business operations, comfort, or product quality. In turn, those facilities agree to reduce their demand during strategic times so that utilities and grid operators can improve reliability during times of peak demand. Demand response also helps increase economic efficiency in regional energy markets and integrate renewable generation capacity into generation systems.

Demand response can be considered a form of strategic energy efficiency, but what about long-term, persistent energy efficiency, a second key to a comprehensive energy management program? In even the most high-tech, LEED Platinum certified buildings, it can be very difficult to ensure efficient operation over time. […]<

See on www.dailyenergyreport.com