Lead Performer: Pacific Northwest National Laboratory – Richland, WA
DOE Funding: $2,700,000
Project Term: October 1, 2013 – September 30, 2015
Funding Type: Core lab funding

Project Objective

The Building Performance Center of Excellence (COE) at PNNL has the mission to develop and deploy solutions to the buildings marketplace that provide owners, operators, service providers, and equipment manufacturers the capability to manage energy consuming assets and systems easily and efficiently, and by utilizing these state of the art solutions, simultaneously enable maximum energy efficiency and enhanced financial transactions leading to a vision of self-aware buildings. Guiding pursuit of this mission is a vision of a future in which:

  • Buildings operate automatically and continuously at peak energy efficiency over their lifetimes and interoperate effectively with the electric power grid.
  • Buildings are self-configuring, self-commissioning, self-learning, self-diagnosing, self-healing, and self-transacting to enable continuous peak performance.
  • Overall building operating costs are lower and asset valuation is higher.

The major project objectives are to increase the operational efficiency and thereby reduce the operational cost of commercial buildings with very little or no capital investment, provide tools that can lead to decreased energy and peak electric power demand by commercial buildings, and ensure persistence of savings from re-tuning. These objectives support BTO corporate goals of cost-effectively reducing energy use in a typical commercial building by 20% by 2020 and 50% by 2050.

Project Impact

Ideally research and development (R&D) projects address needs for the near-term (1-18 months), mid-term (18-36 months), and the long-term (36 months and beyond). The proposed projects for the near- and mid-term focus on widespread dissemination of very low-cost, simple methods to increase the actual operating energy efficiency of existing building systems and also support BTO’s transactive energy vision. In the near-term, PNNL will develop and deploy innovative, highly effective automated tools to enhance building operations and to enable buildings to be active participants in the transactive energy ecosystem. Activities for the mid- to long-term introduce self-configuring, self-commissioning, self-diagnosing, and self-healing building systems that ensure continuous peak operating efficiency and can penetrate a higher percentage of the entire building stock quicker and at lower cost than traditional approaches based on disseminating information in an attempt to change behavior. This last category will lead to the greatest and most persistent increases in energy efficiency..

Contacts

DOE Technology Manager: Marina Sofos
Lead Performer: Andrew Nicholls, Pacific Northwest National Lab