Building Technologies Program Research Articles

Factors Affecting Students’ Academic Performance in a Building Technology Program in Nigeria

Factors Affecting Students’ Academic Performance in a Building Technology Program in Nigeria

Demonstration of high efficiency elastocaloric cooling with large ΔT using NiTi wires

Vapor compression (VC) is by far the most dominant technology for meeting all cooling and refrigeration needs around the world. It is a mature technology with the efficiency of modern compressors approaching the theoretical limit, but its environmental footprint remains a global problem. VC refrigerants such as hydrochloroflurocarbons (HCFCs) and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) are a significant source of green house gas emissions, and their global warming potential (GWP) is as high as 1000 times that of CO2 [Buildings Energy Data Book (Building Technologies Program, Department of Energy, 2009)]. There is an urgent need to develop an alternative high-efficiency cooling technology that is affordable and environmentally friendly [A. D. Little, Report For Office of Building Technology State and Community Programs, Department of Energy, 2001]. Here, we demonstrate that elastocaloric cooling (EC), a type of solid-state cooling mechanism based on the latent heat of reversible martensitic transformation, can have the coefficient of performance as high as ≈11, with a directly measured ΔT of 17 °C. The solid-state refrigerant of EC completely eliminates the use of any GWP refrigerants including HCFCs/HFCs.

The impact of DOE building technology energy efficiency programs on U.S. employment, income, and investment

The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) analyzes the macroeconomic impacts of its programs that are designed to increase the energy efficiency of the U.S. residential and commercial building stock. The analysis is conducted using the Impact of Sector Energy Technologies (ImSET) model, a special-purpose 188-sector input–output model of the U.S. economy designed specifically to evaluate the impacts of energy efficiency investments and saving. For the analysis described in the paper, ImSET was amended to provide estimates of sector-by-sector capital requirements and investment. In the scenario of the Fiscal Year (FY) 2005 Building Technologies (BT) program, the technologies and building practices being developed and promoted by the BT program have the potential to save about 2.9 × 10 15 Btu in buildings by the year 2030, about 27% of the expected growth in building energy consumption by the year 2030. The analysis reported in the paper finds that, by the year 2030, these savings have the potential to increase employment by up to 446,000 jobs, increase wage income by $7.8 billion, reduce needs for capital stock in the energy sector and closely related supporting industries by about $207 billion (and the corresponding annual level of investment by $13 billion), and create net capital savings that are available to grow the nation's future economy.

Advanced Controls for Commercial Buildings: Barriers and Energy Savings Potential

Commercial buildings consume just over 17 quads of primary energy per year, about 17 percent of U.S. energy consumption. TIAX has carried out a two-phase study for the U.S. Department of Energy Building Technology Program (DOE/BT) that evaluates the energy saving potential of four advanced controls approaches in commercial buildings. This article presents the key results of the study, namely assessments of energy saving potential and barriers to achieving significant market share for four controls approaches evaluated.

Preliminary Results from an Advanced Lighting Controls Testbed

LBNL-41633 L-212 Presented at the IESNA 1998 Annual Conference, San Antonio, TX, August 10-12, 1998, and to be published in the Proceedings and considered for p`ublication in the JIES. Preliminary Results from An Advanced Lighting Controls Testbed Francis Rubinstein, Judith Jennings, Douglas Avery Building Technologies Program Environmental Energy Technologies Division Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory University of California Berkeley, California, USA 94720 Steven Blanc Pacific Gas & Electric Co. Customer Energy Management Dept., Research & Development Group 2303 Camino Ramon, Suite 100 San Ramon, California, USA 94583 March 1998 This work was supported by the General Services Administration, Pacific Rim Region; the Pacific, Gas & Electric Co.; and the Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Office of Federal Energy Management Programs and by the Office of Building Technology, State and Community Programs, Office of Building Equipment of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC03-76SF00098.