Looking back at all of the progress we’ve made in 2017 is certainly cause for celebration.
December 20, 2017
minute read time
Looking back at all of the progress we’ve made in 2017 is certainly cause for celebration. Yet, as I mentioned on Energy Efficiency Day, there’s still plenty of work to be done: America’s buildings can save at least 30%, saving billions of dollars in energy costs through efficiency – and if done right, they can get better comfort and performance out of the deal, all while making the U.S. energy economy more productive and resilient.
Over this year, our national laboratories and other partners have been hard at work researching and developing the newest technologies, algorithms, materials, controls, systems, methods, and more to drive innovation in building energy efficiency. And not just in individual energy-consuming items, but across complex systems such as HVAC, building envelopes and windows, and energy management – as well as whole and multiple buildings. One technology where we surpassed the performance of commercially available products, as well as our own performance targets, was a polyisocyanurate composite insulation material. The third-generation prototype achieved R-12.6 per inch in testing, indicating high thermal performance. We also saw great strides in next-generation clothes dryer research. Our team worked to optimize a heat pump clothes dryer prototype, achieving 15% higher efficiency and a 33% shorter dry-time than state-of-the-art heat pump dryers. We continued to make great progress on an ultrasonic clothes dryer, developing and testing both a press-type prototype and also a full-scale drum-integrated prototype, which has the potential to be five times more efficient than conventional drying technologies, while achieving twice as fast drying times.
But we all know that great technology in the lab doesn’t necessarily translate to great performance in the field – homeowners, businesses, and utilities need validated performance information to make informed decisions on new building energy technologies. For example, almost 300 projects from our Solid-State Lighting (SSL) R&D program have resulted in more than 270 patents and more than 250 commercial products, with 38 new products released in 2017 alone. BTO guidance and recognition efforts, such as the Interior Lighting Campaign (ILC), have helped Americans understand the benefits of using SSL technologies. ILC participants are expected to save nearly $24 million annually in electricity costs through energy savings of nearly 229 million kWh by replacing or upgrading interior lighting with high-efficiency products. Our ILC partners have been so successful in replacing their luminaires that we once again raised our program goal in August 2017, from 1 million replaced or newly installed to 2 million by April 2018. BTO and research partners previously have also made progress on new algorithms to control building energy loads in response to price signals from utilities. This year, our Transactive Campuses project successfully tested and validated this technology across multiple campuses while maintaining safety and comfort – an important step toward a grid-interactive efficient building future.
BTO’s data, decision, and design guides also passed major milestones in 2017. The Building America Solution Center (BASC) surpassed 1 million total visitors since its launch in 2013, representing 1 million times that residential building professionals accessed expert information on high-performance design and construction that saves Americans energy and lowers their utility bills. In August we were also proud to announce that energy and asset data for over 1 million buildings had been entered into the Building Performance Database (BPD), reinforcing BPD’s status as the nation’s largest dataset of energy performance information for commercial and residential buildings. Our Home Energy Score program saw more than 10% growth in the number of homes scored year-over-year, surpassing more than 75,000 homes scored since program launch by a growing network of more than 30 Partners and over 500 certified Assessors.
Major industry players also got into the act this year, incorporating BTO tools in their own commercial products. Trane, an Ingersoll Rand brand, re-architected its long-standing TRACE™ software package to be built on BTO’s whole-building energy modeling engine EnergyPlus™. Chicago-based Commonwealth Edison (ComEd) announced the incorporation of some Accelerate Performance elements into one of its official new construction program offerings, making it easier for owners to harness commercial buildings’ energy savings potential by engaging in energy-performance based procurement at the onset of construction projects.
Our Building Energy Codes Program started work on a new commercial compliance field study in 2017, which will develop an affordable, accurate methodology for assessing the savings potential of increasing compliance with the energy codes. Today, no standardized approach exists – which means states and utilities have no way to know whether the energy code is delivering the savings expected. Field data collection will begin in 2018.
The new year will also publish new technology roadmaps to help guide future R&D activities and targets across many of BTO’s technology areas. Personally, I’m very excited to soon share a new white paper that will explain BTO’s strategy for grid-interactive efficient buildings, alongside research and field validation highlights from our projects in this space.
I expect our next third-party evaluation of BTO’s long-term programmatic activities – this time focused on the Building America program – will similarly show economic and societal benefits like those demonstrated in the recent HVAC, Water Heating, and Appliance evaluation. Working with ASHRAE, we will be releasing Advanced Energy Design Guide for K-12 School Buildings: Achieving a Zero Energy Building; Advanced Energy Design Guides are used by engineers and architects to reduce building energy consumption by up to 50%. We’re also very excited to see growing interest from future architects, engineers, construction managers, and entrepreneurs in the Race to Zero Student Design Competition – over 80 teams are vying for one of 40 finalist spots in the next competition, which will for the first time feature a contest focused on commercial building design (fittingly enough, a school).
All that we have accomplished, and all that’s still to come, is thanks to a great team across DOE, the national labs, and our project partners in academia and industry, all of who have helped us at BTO push the limits on achieving new energy and cost savings from improved building technologies and systems. I’m looking forward to seeing the great progress ahead helping Americans build, manage, and occupy highly efficient and smart buildings in 2018!
Wishing you a peaceful and prosperous new year,
– David