Building Energy Resilience

Fault Detection and Diagnostics (FDD) is an exciting new software tool used to contain energy costs and diagnose energy issues that affect the life and functionality of HVAC equipment and lighting. FDD takes the ability of the direct digital control (DDC) systems a giant leap further into analyzing the performance of these building systems.

There are a number of ways to procure design and construction services for a commercial building project. The predominant approaches are design-bid-build (DBB) and design-build (DB). The former is the practice of hiring a design team (architects and engineers) to develop a set of documents upon which multiple construction teams bid for the work. The latter, the focus of this discussion, involves the owner selecting a prime contractor or construction manager who takes responsibility for the design and construction. In some cases the contractors and their subcontractors (such as the mechanical subs) directly employ licensed personnel who provide design services; in other cases the prime and/or subcontractor hires design consultants to provide design services.

Desalination is an expensive and energy-intensive way to produce fresh water, but for some areas of the world, it is the only available option to support growing populations or to mitigate effects of degrading water resources. Are there opportunities to meet this demand for fresh water in a more energy efficient and cost-effective way?

This is the second in a series of posts focused on the connection between energy efficiency and sound control. It may seem intuitive that efficient mechanical systems will also be quiet mechanical systems. However, it generally makes sense from cost and performance standpoints to deliberately design with both in mind.

When I was managing business energy efficiency programs at Efficiency Vermont (EVT), I diagrammed the web of market forces that affect decisions around energy efficiency in buildings. I’ve recently been encountering those market forces and new vectors that I hadn’t even considered back in the nascent days of EVT. As a result of these encounters, I’ve realized how fundamental people are to a successful transformation of our building stock into efficient and sustainable structures. People tend to fall between the following camps:

An Energy Services Company (ESCO) is a commercial business that “will identify and evaluate energy saving opportunities and then recommend a package of improvements to be paid for through savings”.[1] Performance Contracting with an ESCO can be a very powerful tool for a company with energy saving opportunities but no upfront cash or financing options to implement the projects. An ESCO is a one-stop shop for energy opportunity identification, quantification, financing, implementation, staff training and a guarantee that the savings will cover the costs of the project. For a business, the bottom line is that one’s annual operating costs will not increase, because project financing and the cost of the ESCO are both covered in the energy and maintenance savings realized by the project. In addition, the ESCO assumes the risk of under-performance. If the savings are not achieved, the ESCO is responsible for covering the difference.

When as a facility operator you’re looking to reduce data center energy use, it can be difficult to know where to begin in the process of improving efficiency. Regardless of whether your organization operates a large datacenter, or a small server room, you probably face the same question: Should we start by improving efficiency of the actual IT equipment, the supporting systems such as HVAC, or both?

There are many opportunities to improve computer datacenter energy performance, whether you’re operating a small server closet, or a large datacenter in a Fortune 1,000 company. But the key to tackling energy use in datacenters is measuring and tracking energy performance over time. Relevant measurement of energy performance over time is feasible now, but that has not always been the case.

What is light pollution? It's light that goes where it is not useful. The human race evolved with dark skies at night. The advent of electrification has lead to a proliferation of nighttime lighting that we use to help us find our way and to increase our security in the dark.

Renewable energy – wind and solar in particular – are all the rage these days. Companies are clamoring to be to be seen as “green” to feel good about their power sources and to market this image to the world. But what many don’t do first is the less glamorous and less visible step of reducing their need for energy by retrocommissioning and investing in energy efficiency. Why put in a large array of solar panels when a quarter of this load represents wasted building energy?