Publications

Most engineers focus on improving energy efficiency to reduce energy consumption. There is, however, another mportant component that impacts energy use and that has, to this point, been largely ignored — water consumption. Water and energy are invariably intertwined into what is referred to as the energy water nexus.

Water conservation has become an increasingly important aspect of commercial building design strategies, with several factors driving this movement.

Currently, low and medium temperature supermarket refrigeration is an inherently inefficient and expensive process. However there is good news. Supermarkets can benefit from the use of thermal energy storage.

Sustainability is a core value of the Jefferson Community College (JCC) mission. Located on 37 wooded acres in northern New York State on the outskirts of Watertown, Jefferson Community College has long advocated responsibly using resources to achieve balance among economic, environmental, and social practices and policies.

In the last days of the steam locomotive rumbling through the Garden State, New Jersey was an epicenter for groundbreaking inventors.

Replacing or supplementing a building’s heating and cooling energy requirements with renewable-powered alternatives is attractive, particularly in areas with vast renewable resources. However, regardless of the selected renewable generating method, the resources are usually intermittent. In the case of heating and cooling applications, thermal storage is an attractive and readily available technology to overcome this intermittency.

Whether or not you know it, if you manage an office building, school, university, mall, or hospital and are in a region that has a demand charge over $10 per kilowatt each month, the price you pay for electricity is likely more than twice as much during the day than it is at night. Even customers who receive “flat rates” from their utility or third-party supplier pay a much higher rate during daytime hours, due to the effects of demand charges. In a sense, demand charges serve as a peak-time adder for a typical nonresidential customer with a bell-shaped load curve, making energy twice as expensive during the day – or, looking at it from another perspective, half-off at night.

As the second-most populated country on this planet, India’s ever-growing demand for energy has shown no signs of dwindling. A clearly strained electricity infrastructure is supplying the sixth-largest electricity consumer in the world, and it shows.

The Senate just extended the EPAct 179D federal tax deduction for building efficiency measures such as thermal energy storage. Contact us to see if your project qualifies.

The facility’s thermal energy storage system stores ice made from the chiller overnight when electricity is less expensive.

The climate is changing as evidenced by ASHRAE Research Project 1453, which recently updated the climate zones and design conditions in ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 169-2013, Climate Data for Building Design Standards. How will the changing climate impact building design and operation?

Written in 1985, this early article on thermal storage cites the humble beginnings of leveling air conditioning loads and storing cooling during off-peak hours.

The world's need to reduce its carbon emissions by reducing, in part, its dependence on fossil fuel, will completely change the make up of our electric delivery system. The reason is simple fossil fuels are not just forms of energy; they are forms of stored energy. Coal is not hot until you light it. If we plan to replace fossil fuels with other forms of energy, such as wind power or solar, then we also need to replace the storage characteristic of fossil fuels.

Discover what makes thermal energy storage a green technology. Also examine safety factor and benefits from incorporating storage.

Using thermal energy storage has shifted gigawatts of power off of daytime peaks in a cost-effective manner. However, thermal energy storage (TES) market penetration is small in comparison to its potential. Why?

In numerous studies, it has been proven that electricity is produced and delivered much more efficiently during off-peak hours than during on-peak periods. For every kilowatt-hour of energy that is shifted from on-peak usage to off-peak, there is a reduction in the source fuel needed to generate it. While the exact amount of savings varies, studies show a range from 8 to 30 percent for two of the major utilities studied. The reduction in source fuel normally results in a reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions produced by the power plant.

Until recently, demand charges have been over looked on bills. Many facilities professionals have focused on reducing their costs by cutting kilowatt-hours (kWh) consumption, but now that managers can reduce the demand charge, that mindset is changing. This article will present a summary of the challenges and a unique "Free Lunch" algorithm designed to lower utility demand charges in buildings with control systems.

Discover how thermal energy storage works and the variations of this energy-efficient model that are becoming increasingly popular as electrical demand and cost continue to rise.

Commercial cooling is a major contributor to peak power demand, but it also represents on of the few areas where load management methods are practical, cost-effective and proven. A well designed thermal storage system will effective and efficiently reduce electrical demand, exploit time-of-day rates and remain totally transparent to a building's occupants.

California changed its building codes to more directly approach reducing peak demand. If this innovative strategy proves successful, it could signal the adoption of significant changes to building codes nationwide.

Similar to the Black Friday sales, most electric utilities offer discounts every night for commercial customers, but can all HVAC systems take advantage of such sales? Using electricity at night oἀers savings to build-ing owners in the form of a demand charge reduction (dollars per kilowatt), cheaper energy, or both, but the building must have the ability to “go” to the sale.

Most people probably don't think about air-conditioners when they think about factors contributing to pollution. However, commercial and residential buildings can consume 72% of electricity during the day- most of which goes to the energy spent on heating and cooling these spaces and their occupants.

Designers of buildings and cooling systems must recognize how using and purchasing energy from the smart grid will change their practices accordingly. How much and when electricity is used is changing and building owners must understand that a little more investment in the life cycle cost and design stage can pay big dividends later. 

Energy storage has been called the ‘holy grail’ of the electric power system. Currently, grid operators struggle to balance supply and demand in real time, which causes a host of problems:Grid-scale energy storage systems respond quickly to these imbalances, shaping and shifting energy to when it is needed most.

Thermal energy storage has been widely used in the commercial sector since the 1980s to shift HVAC cooling load out of the peak demand period of the day. By charging a chilled water or ice-based thermal energy storage system overnight, a facility can take advantage of off-peak electricity prices and reduce any charges based on peak demand.

Ground-coupled heat pump (GCHP) systems consume less purchased energy than an HVAC system using fossil fuel and electricity directly for heating and cooling. However, the cost of building the ground heat exchanger (GHX) often prevents acceptance of GBHP systems.