Friday 18th January
Flew out to NYC. Arrived safe and sound......
Saturday 19th January
ASHRAE Welcome Party
Kent Peterson (ASHRAE President) welcomed all to the event and introduced the conference to everybody. He was followed by ASHRAE Executive Vice President Jeff H. Littleton who reflected on the ASHRAE financial year and stability.
The keynote speaker for this year was Steve Rizzo, who gave an uplifting talk on how to adjust your attitude through your ‘humour being’.
Sunday 20th January
Student Breakfast Meeting
My day started bright and early at the Student Breakfast meeting. This was a great event which had student tables from universities and colleges across the US and even some from further a field (Hawaii).
Kent Peterson opened the event with a short presentation on the future of young student members and how important their role is in the future of sustainable energy. He commented how the US is the biggest global contributor to green house gasses and that 40% of the US energy consumption is from buildings. This is a fantastic time to start in the industry and we, the young engineers and students, can make a huge difference to the future.
The event then presented numerous awards including; the design competition awards, the student branch advisor awards and also, my own, the CIBSE/ASHRAE UK graduate of the year award.
Former ASHRAE President (2001-2002) William Coad then gave a very interesting talk titled ‘Beyond Green’. He conversed on how, in the last 200 years (he also put it 3 life times ago), engineers have designed and manufacture machines which vastly increased productivity and also economy. However these machines (steam engines, planes, cars etc) have resulted in the current climate change issue. He challenges the new, fresh engineering sector to redesign these machines, undo the damage what we have done in the last 200 years and, while also keeping productivity, produce refined machinery which uses resources which do not harm the Earth’s atmosphere. He then went on to say that ‘… engineers have to save the world and that we are the ones which can turn it around'.
Brenda Morana, University of South Florida, also gave a presentation which was titled ‘The Green movement… We are making a difference.’ Brenda’s presentation was on how ASHRAE and the US are making a difference. She demonstrated this through a number of case study buildings and the LEED rating system (see www.usgbc.org for more information). She also made several references to AHSRAE 90.1 (which is the equivalent to the UK's Part L Building Regulations) and went through the design and compliance method of building design, which again is very similar to the process we carry out in the UK.
The case study buildings Brenda used were;
1180 Peach Tree, Atlanta: a 40 storey office block, which was the first building to receive a gold certificate in LEED. The main sustainable technologies used in this building were storm water storage, lighting savings and other methods such as building orientation (which alone saved 2% energy consumption). For more information on this building go to:
http://www.cement.org/buildings/buildings_office_peachtree.asp
Schlumberger: 45,000 square ft building which again made huge savings through good water and waste management and design. This building used dual flush-flush valves and installed flow restricting diverters. In construction the carbon footprint was also reduced by recycling 76% waste.
Raytheon, Huntsville: This had a 30% saving compared to the ASHRAE code and was a project which was over budget. To demonstrate the importance of installing energy efficient equipment, life cycle cost analysis was carried out to show that initial investment in sustainable design can be economically viable.
ABN AMRO, Chicago Banking Centre: This was an existing building refurbishment of 1.3 million sq.ft, 3000 employers. The project was awarded a Gold LEED Certification and purchased 22,500 MWh, over 15 months, of biomass generated fuel to offset its carbon footprint which gave a 70% offset.
To end the student programme Kansas State University and the University of Oregon gave short presentations on the on goings at their campuses and what they have contributed and studied to the aid greater cause of global warming.
Transaction Session 2 - Energy Efficiency and Sustainability of Datacom Facilities
The number of data centres across the UK, and the rest of the world, is rapidly increasing. Data centres use tremendous amounts of electrical energy for both equipment and cooling 24/7. Generally the design approach for data centres is concentrated on uptime and reliability, leaving energy by the waist side. I wanted to attend this seminar to see what opportunities the US were taking to optimise energy efficiency in datacom facilities.
The seminar consisted of four speakers: Joe Prisco, John Lane, Dennis Landsberg and Christopher Malone.
Joe Prisco gave a talk on ‘Electrical and Heat Load Planning: Keep Your Data Processing Environment Running’. This was mainly aimed at the end facility users rather than the building services engineer. However he did discuss the need for more accurate electrical consumption design and how systems should be sized correctly to represent actual power loads not what’s on the ‘name plate’. He went onto to discuss ways in which datacom facilities can monitor and record power consumption (not so different from energy metering).
John Lane then took over to talk to the audience about data centre cooling, which was titled ‘Evaporative Cooling Choices to Maximise Waterside Ecominizer Use in Datacom Installations’. He discussed the various advantages and disadvantages of evaporative cooling towers (open and closed loop) and dry air coolers. What he did talk over, which I thought was quite useful, was a Hybrid closed circuit cooler which uses the benefit of both and evaporative condenser and an dry air cooler for the seasonal c weather changes. This helps frost protection, saves water and optimises energy use. For more information see the below link:
http://www.ferret.com.au/n/The-hybrid-cooling-advantage-n696076
Dennis Landsberg then cleanly took over to advance on John Lanes discussion and talk about geothermal heat rejection for data facilities. His presentation was titled ‘Geothermal Heat Rejection Systems for Data Centres’. He gave a system overview of a typical datacom cooling strategy using water cooled via geothermal wells. With no compressors used in the system it boasts a COP of 7.4 in the summer and a COP of 4.3 in the winter. However, as always with geothermal technology, the right location and soil temperatures are critical for this system to work to its optimum.
To end the session, Christopher Malone (Google) gave a short talk on the current problems in today’s data centres both in energy terms and capacity growth. Figures report that 50% of current data centres have insufficient power and cooling capacity to meet the demands of high-density equipment. He went on to discuss the work he had done on’ Power Usage Effectiveness’ (PUE), which is now an industry standard for data centre efficiency metric and is adopted by Green Grid and ASHRAE TC9.9.
Learn more about PUE at:
http://h50043.www5.hp.com/hpservices/ap_features/Jan07/4024.htm
Student Technical Tour: New York Times Building
For the afternoon I decided to attend the student technical tour of the ‘New York Times Building’. This building has good energy efficient technology such as UFAD (under floor air distribution) system, external shading integrated with day lighting controls, co-generation (or Combined Heat and Power) and an absorption chiller.
Due to the price of electricity in New York, the Times Building generates its own electricity using 2 gas fired generators. The heat is recovered from the generators exhaust (or flue) via a heat exchanger which uses the heat for hot water distribution and heating. It’s essentially an electrical led CHP system. The chilled water system also uses this waste heat to drive an absorption chiller.
See the following for more info:
http://www.building.co.uk/sustain_story.asp?sectioncode=747&storycode=3103537&c=3
Monday 21st January 2008
Seminar 23 - Green Buildings: Practical Experience with Commissioning
It’s one thing designing an energy conscious building with the latest sustainable technology, but what’s the point if it is never operated as its design intent? Commissioning is key to ensure that sustainable design is implemented in operation and that is why I attended this lecture.
The first speaker was Malcom Lewis and his presentation was titled ‘Six LEED Buildings: Certification and Commissioning Experience’. His talk was based on the commissioning of six case study buildings which achieved a LEED certification. One very key point which he talked on, that I thought was a very good incentive, was the award of 1 LEED point to a building which takes carry’s out further commissioning after the building is handed over by a third party. He went on to say that in one project a 5% energy saving was made through revisiting the site, once occupied, and making final adjustments, changes and ensuring the building was operating as intended.
The second speaker was Paul Torcellini, whose presentation was titled: Making High Performance Buildings Work. The first point Paul made was how crucial the current energy issue is; the commercial sector energy use is going up 1.6% per year (and growing faster than the energy savings being made throughout the industry). His view, like mine, was that owners are the key to making a sustainable design work, they need to be committed and it is our job to try and get them committed. He also talked about aggressive targets, not designing a building based on a 30% better energy performance than the previous building regulations, but based on an energy allowance per m2 which you must comply with.
Paul then went onto to go through some case study green buildings; Oberlin College Lewis Centre, NREL Thermal Test Facility, Zion Visitors Centre and Bighorn Home Improvement Centre. All used various technologies such as: day lighting controls, GSHPs, water treatment, PV, natural ventilation and thrombe walls. See more info on these buildings at the below links:
http://www.buildinggreen.com/hpb/overview.cfm?projectid=18
http://www.buildinggreen.com/hpb/overview.cfm?projectid=120
http://www.eere.energy.gov/buildings/database/overview.cfm?projectid=16
http://www.eere.energy.gov/buildings/database/overview.cfm?ProjectID=54
The final speaker’s, Jay Enck, presentation was titled: 'Integrating LEED Certification with Commissioning'. He started with some facts about LEED. Currently there are 40,000 LEED applications, with only 735 certified buildings and 6000 buildings which have registered to the scheme. He touched on the importance of commissionability design review, in order to avoid change requests, and also talked about the importance commissioning overview from the start of the project. He believes that, with the right input, effective commissioning can vastly reduce green house gasses, solve problems early on in the design, solves maintenance issues in construction and improves delivery of efficiency. By paying the design team added fees to have additional co-ordination and analysis meetings, better cross discipline communication and a detailed commissioning process, it will optimise energy performance within the building and work out economically superior through energy savings.
Seminar 31 – Exergy Efficient Design, Analysis and Rating for Net Zero Energy Buildings, Part 1
This seminar dealt with the design, analysis and rating methods of exergy for HVAC systems, equipment and buildings in connection with improvements in the build environment. Exergy is the quality of energy which is defined as the amount of useful work that can be derived from a given amount of the energy source supplied.
Peter Platell started with his presentation: Ground Energy Storage and Low-Exergy HVAC systems. He first gave an explanation of what a Net Zero Energy Building (NZEB) which is a building which takes no more energy from the grid than it returns (through renewable source) annually. He then talked over geothermal technology and made an interesting point on the COP in geothermal systems, saying that they are only as good as the electrical power they’re supplied with (i.e. electrical supply from the grid is only 35% efficient, which means that they may sometimes generate just as much CO2 then a gas fired boiler).
He gave some good references of his work as below:
Low Temperature Energy – Report No. 656052-1, 1988, and
Developing Work on Ground Heat Exchangers, which can be found at:
http://intraweb.stockton.edu/eyos/energy_studies/content/docs/FINAL_PAPERS/7A-1.pdf
Then Siir Kilkis took the stage to give her two presentations: Rational Exergy Management Rating for Net Zero Energy Buildings, and Exergy Guidance for Sustainability and Analysis Tool. Siir had done some interesting work Net Zero Energy, Exergy and Carbon Buildings. She demonstrated that there is a long way to go in order to develop a true Zero Carbon Building (ZCB). She explained that the root cause of the impact of harmful emissions lies within the scope of rational exergy management, which deals with the quality of energy resources and the quality of exergy requirements.
Tuesday 22nd January 2008
Seminar 43 – Net Zero Energy Buildings: The Impact of O&M Practices, Part 1
Richard Rooley, former ASHRAE president (and the only non-national president to date – he’s English) chaired this presentation. He started with a very well thought ???? explaining that we have just reached the point of being able to make Net Zero Energy Buildings (or, how he put it, a new musical instrument). But we have not taught anyone how to operate one (no one knows how to play the instrument). We must therefore educate people into operating a Net Zero Energy Building (or play the instrument).
John Armstrong, CIBSE President, then opened up the Seminar with: Zero Energy Buildings: What are the O&M Practices and Costs? He started with a brief discussion on what the UK are doing towards Zero Carbon Buildings (ZCB) and how the UK Green Carbon Council have issued a report which suggests a non domestic ZCB could be produced for just 5-10% more expenditure (see http://www.dcnonl.com/article/id25917). He also went to talk about resources in the UK for maintenance being very low and the economics of maintenance. Currently owners tend to spend the very minimum on maintenance, relying on reactive maintenance rather than proactive maintenance. To provide zero carbon buildings, which will have the latest technology, will require proactive maintenance with properly serviced equipment. This will of course put the cost up to property developers and will therefore require owner and occupants to buy into the low carbon process. He finished by discussing how technology in the last 30 years has dramatically become more technical, therefore the correct operation and maintenance must follow suit in order for us to be successful.
Richard Jarnagin then took the microphone and gave his presentation on ‘Achieving Net Zero Energy Buildings: Design is Only Half the Battle’. Richard gave an interesting talk on how there are three steps required in achieving a Net Zero Energy Building and each of these processes must be carried out correctly or else the overall goal will not be achieved. To get to NZEB we need to make a 70% reduction in energy use and make the rest up with renewable. AHSRAE 90.1 (and the same with Part L) show how to design an efficient building but give little in respect to how to operate it one. He said it is vital to give appropriate standards for operation and maintenance of a low energy building and that the designer needs to play a larger role in ensuring operation compliance.
Cedric Trueman concluded the seminar with: The Case for O&M Requirements in Energy Standards. He expanded further on Richard Jarnagin’s point of including detailed O&M literature in energy standards such as ASHRAE 90.1. He also suggested that an enforcement mechanism should be put in place after the project construction to ensure that the building is operating as designed.
Javits Centre Exhibition – AHR EXPO
I took my chance to pop over to the Javits exhibition to check out the latest HVAC products. Amongst the 1800 exhibits, the following caught my eye:
Space-Ray (Infered Gas Heaters): www.spaceray.com
Ice Air (Ice Storage Systems): www.calmac.com
Plastec Ventilation (Plastic Ductwork): www.plastecvent.com
Ductsox (Fabric Ducts): www.ductsox.com