Building Technologies Office Awards Four Phase II Release 2 Small Business Innovation Research Funding for Advanced Green Buildings

On Friday, August 25, 2023, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced 106 awards totaling $126 million in research and development grants for 90 different small businesses whose projects will address multiple mission areas across the Department, and this year, the Building Technologies Office (BTO) is investing $4.6 million into four projects of those projects. This year’s Phase 2 Release 2 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) funding will pursue innovations to accelerate building decarbonization across four topical research areas, including home energy audits, envelope systems, thermal energy storage, and window attachments.

The SBIR and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs give U.S. small businesses an opportunity to conduct high-risk innovative research and technology development, which have high potential for commercialization, spurring innovation, and job creation. Small businesses with selected projects will receive Phase II Release 2 grants that demonstrated technology feasibility for innovations during the first phase of their research. Phase II awards are up to $1,150,000 over the duration of 12 to 24 months.

This year’s Phase II selections in BTO’s portfolio are:

Topic C54-20c: Home Energy Score

• ClearlyEnergy, Severna Park, Maryland – “Remotely: A Home Energy Score App”: ClearlyEnergy will develop and improve “Remotely,” an easy-to-use smartphone app that provides contractors, energy professionals, and homeowners with a preliminary Home Energy Score that’s calculated from an energy audit conducted through augmented reality. If successfully adopted, ClearlyEnergy’s app could make home energy audits easier to conduct and interpret for everyone involved.

Topic C54-20a: High Performance Insulated Cladding for Residential Field Applied Applications

• IBACOS, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – “Insulated Siding for Residential Retrofits”: IBACOS will develop an insulated siding system called “InsulClad” that can be installed easily with minimal disruption to occupants by combining existing technologies in a novel way. This new retrofit and residing approach improves the constructability, energy efficiency, and moisture management of siding in an aesthetically pleasing way that’s critical for market adoption. IBACOS will refine the designs for manufacturing and demonstrate InsulClad on two homes to validate its benefits.

Topic C54-10c: Integrated TES in HVAC&R Systems

• MicroEra Power, Rochester, New York – “THERMAplus, Tunable TES for Different Applications and Climate Zones”: MicroEra Power will develop a next-generation thermal energy storage technology with tunable phase change materials, hardware, and smart software to provide low-cost and low-carbon cooling and heating for commercial buildings, including campus and district energy applications. MicroEra Power will test the phase change material’s tunability across a wide range of temperatures (between 6°C to 65°C) in the field to demonstrate the potential it has to integrate with HVAC systems more simply.

Topic C54-20b: Low-Cost Exterior Window Attachments for Disadvantaged Communities

• IBACOS, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – “Site Specific Exterior Shading Device” IBACOS will develop a cost-effective residential shading solution package called “Xtrashade,” which includes a smartphone app for customers, shading products, and service providers. Xtrashade combines two types of modular exterior awning hardware systems with shading performance analysis and software for optimizing device configurations. If successful, Xtrashade will become a more simplified method to provide the most impactful cooling load reduction in hot climate homes, particularly those without air conditioning in disadvantaged and underserved communities.

Small businesses play a major role in spurring innovation and creating jobs in the U.S. economy. The SBIR and STTR programs were created by Congress to leverage small businesses in advancing innovation through federal agencies. Information on the DOE SBIR and STTR programs are available on the Office of Science SBIR/STTR website.