The Better Buildings Bulletin keeps you up to date on partner successes, program updates, opportunities to participate, and more. View the Bulletin online.
Out of an abundance of caution, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is virtually conducting the 2020 Better Buildings, Better Plants Summit, originally set to take place in Arlington, Virginia. The Summit will now be a series of timely webinars and peer exchanges throughout June 8 -11. We are also excited to announce we are including an Opening Plenary on Monday, June 8. All virtual meetings will be free to attend. View the schedule and register here.
DOE recognized Better Buildings partner Chesapeake College for energy efficiency advances made throughout its Wye Mills, Maryland campus. The college has reduced its energy intensity by 24% since 2011, reaching its Better Buildings Challenge goal of 20% energy reduction eight years ahead of schedule. Chesapeake College has saved more than $250,000 per year in energy costs and is committed to achieving carbon neutrality in campus operations by 2025. View photos on the Beat Blog.
Fort Wayne City Utilities – City of Fort Wayne, IN
Vitro Flat Glass
Better Buildings Residential Network
Liberty Custom Home Builders
New Partner Solutions
The following Solutions-at-a-Glance demonstrate the hard work and innovative thinking of Better Buildings partners. Check out these replicable solutions and others in the Better Buildings Solution Center.
Centrica Business Solutions, Connecticut Green Bank, and other organizations partnered to deliver a cogeneration system to Bridgeport, Connecticut at no upfront cost to the city. The system features chilled and thermal water loops, controls systems, and underground piping for a microgrid to power key municipal buildings.
Chesapeake College has reduced its annual energy consumption while increasing campus resilience through the college’s partnership with its utility. The school secured a power purchase agreement for a 1.8 megawatt (MW) ground and carport-based solar photovoltaic (PV) installation. This partnership has since grown to include a battery storage and partial campus microgrid project.
The EcoStruxure Building Advisor tool uses inputs from building management systems and connected devices and applies analytics to make recommendations to technical support staff and management for opportunities to reduce maintenance costs, increase comfort, and optimize energy.
View the full Better Buildings Webinar schedule here.
Tuesday, April 21, 2020: 3 - 4 p.m. ET Finance + Resilience Initiative Part 1: Building the Financial Business Case for Resilience
Part one of this two-week mini-series will highlight how commercial building owners can build the financial case for resilience, best practices for measuring financial risk, and strategies for managing insurance cost and business risk.
Tuesday, April 28, 2020: 3 - 4 p.m. ET Finance + Resilience Initiative Part 2: Taking Action to Improve Resilience and Disclose Performance
Part two of this mini-series will focus on different mechanisms for financing resilience projects, reporting frameworks for disclosing resilience performance, and pulling everything together into a resilience risk management plan.
Tuesday, May 12, 2020: 3 - 4 p.m. ET Get Smart (Labs): Results from the Smart Labs Accelerator
This webinar will highlight best practices for developing a Smart Labs Program and feature results from partners who participated in the three-year Better Buildings Smart Labs Accelerator.
Thursday, April 16, 2020: 1 - 2 p.m. ET Smart Lab Webinar Series: New Methods to Test Performance of Modern Fume Hoods and High-Performance Airflow Systems
The Better Buildings Smart Labs Accelerator has partnered with I2SL for a series of webinars on smart laboratories. This webinar will describe new methods to test, manage, and maintain variable air volume fume hoods and modern high-performance airflow systems to achieve safe, energy-efficient, and sustainable laboratories.
Tuesday, April 28, 2020: 1 - 2 p.m. ET Renewables Integration Technology Research Team Call
The Better Buildings Renewables Integration Team will discuss utility rate structures and their effects on continuous demand management in commercial buildings. Learn about the obstacles and opportunities facing utilities and building owners seeking to implement solutions for more grid-interactive efficient buildings.
Thursday, May 14, 2020: 1 - 2:30 p.m. ET The Impact of the Coronavirus on Residential Energy Efficiency Programs: Perspectives from the Field
This Better Buildings Residential Network Peer Exchange Call will explore how energy efficiency companies are facing business and operational challenges posed by COVID-19.
Wednesday, May 20, 2020: 2 - 3 p.m. ET Smart Energy Analytics Campaign Spring 2020 Award Winners
The Smart Energy Analytics Campaign recognizes exemplary efforts in the implementation of energy management and information systems (EMIS). These are the final awards in the campaign, so join us to learn how the recipients successfully implemented building analytics through their EMIS in a wide variety of building types, saving energy and moving from reactive to proactive maintenance.
Pre-registration is not required. To join the webinar, click here.
Thursday, May 21, 2020: 1 - 2:30 p.m. ET Opportunities for ESPCs in Data Centers
This webinar will present an overview of opportunities for using energy savings performance contracts (ESPC) as a mechanism to finance energy improvements in data centers and explain why data centers are uniquely positioned and well-suited for ESPCs.
Thursday, May 28, 2020: 1 - 2:30 p.m. ET Is the Smart Home Delivering on Its Promises?
Join this Better Buildings Residential Network Peer Exchange Call to discuss the smart home concept and smart technologies generally; the call will explore the results being delivered in the real world.
Thursday, June 11, 2020: 1 - 2:30 p.m. ET Your Home is Your Health: Measures and Data
Join the Better Buildings Residential Network for a look at which energy efficiency measures can most effectively improve the health of a home and dive into the data behind those recommendations.
Denver piloted DOE's Home Energy Score™ for 18 months and the response from homeowners was overwhelmingly positive. Just like a miles-per-gallon rating for a car, the score provides comparable and credible information about a home's energy efficiency. The majority of participating Denver homeowners believe that their Home Energy Score report will help them save energy and money.
Better Buildings Challenge multifamily partners are challenging the misperception that solar power is an amenity reserved for middle- and upper-income households. Using an innovative financing model championed by NHT Communities called “portfolio-level solar,” six challenge partners have installed 8.4 MW of solar PV in affordable multifamily properties.
Through DOE’s Interior Lighting Campaign (ILC), participants have replaced more than 3.5 million lighting systems, cumulatively saving roughly 800 million kWh of electricity per year (approximately the energy used by 80,000 U.S. homes) and $85 million in energy costs. The 2015 – 2019 ILC outcomes report distills the results and lessons learned.
Recent news articles featuring Better Buildings partners are listed below.
The updated Power Chain Tool from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab’s Center of Expertise for Energy Efficiency in Data Centers allows users to calculate energy efficiency opportunities in their facilities.
The performance of solar PV systems for any building owner can be optimized throughout their 20- to 30-year lifespans by conducting proper operations and maintenance (O&M). This online resource from the Federal Energy Management Program offers an overview of PV performance, how to measure it, and how to optimize it with an O&M plan.
The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) created a series of short tutorial videos for its REopt Lite tool, which allows users to evaluate the economic viability of grid-connected PV, wind, and battery storage at a site.
With thousands of devices in today’s large buildings, individually monitoring every plug load becomes a nontrivial task. To address this, researchers at NREL proposed a method for combining a limited amount of smart plug metering with a device inventory to develop a disaggregated breakdown of device-level power consumption.
The Integrated Lighting Campaign is a new DOE effort designed to help facility owners and managers take advantage of savings opportunities and benefits of integrating lighting systems with other building and business systems in their facilities. Scheduled to launch in 2020, the campaign will serve as a resource for relevant research regarding new advanced lighting controls and integrated lighting systems and recognize exemplary projects from participants.
This toolkit collects tools and resources – including guidance, fact sheets, case studies, and product search tools – to help facility owners and managers take advantage of savings opportunities from high-efficiency interior lighting solutions.
In case you missed it: Better Buildings Webinars on Demand
Explore more on-demand Better Buildings webinars here.
This webinar addressed the financial impact of energy performance and provided attendees with information used to assess energy and climate risk in portfolios.
This webinar highlighted the design and rollout of the newest Better Buildings recognition campaign for achievements in adopting high-performance building envelope technologies.
This Space Conditioning Technology Research Team call highlighted recent research related to improving efficiency and longevity of cooling tower systems through various water treatment technologies.
DOE awarded $26.3 million to 40 competitively selected projects to pursue innovations that can advance the goals of the agency’s Advanced Building Construction (ABC) Initiative; ABC is an effort to unlock deeper energy savings in the U.S. building sector through energy-efficient technologies and practices in building construction.
Archived Peer Exchange Calls/Lessons Learned
Review past peer exchange calls from the Better Buildings Residential Network. Recent topics include:
