The Bush sponsored tax cuts did not do what they were supposed to do. They did not increase our national economic vitality one wit. They should be allowed to expire post-haste. We need the money to offset more energy conservation tax incentives. US policy should lead the world in energy conservation, not follow! 
About taxes, Teddy Roosevelt said:
No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned. Every dollar received should represent a dollar’s worth of service rendered–not gambling in stocks, but service rendered.
The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size, acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means.
Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective–a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion, and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate.
Words to remember in November.
1/6 of all the energy used is consumed to heat, cool and ventilate buildings.
$120 billion per year. Some of the 2009 stats HVAC designs that I have incorporated recently into my office building projects are expected to use 30% less than the levels allowed by the local and state building codes. (ASHRAE Energy code 90.1-2004).
Consider that more than 70 percent of existing commercial buildings in the country were constructed prior to 1980 (according to floor area, see this 2001 study) . It is very likely that most of these older buildings consume well over the present building code allowable.
There are no laws requiring them to retrofit. The financial incentive to retrofit is all that exists, and unfortunately, this is another example of out-of sight, out-of-mind ignorance. (and HVAC and building energy use in general getting no respect).
These buildings should be retrofitted to reduce energy use a minimum of 30% and more. Up to $48-60 billion per year is being simply wasted. Wow! That is $200 a year for every man woman and child in the US. Almost half as much as we throw away on the war in Iraq. ($130 billion in 2007)
Hey you, turn off that A/C, open the windows and or crank up the free-cooling control cycle!
Lighting… I did not mention lighting: higher efficiency lighting and optimal daylighting could save ANOTHER $20 billion /year easy.
If you still a skeptic, please read: “Working Toward the Very Low Energy Consumption Building of the Future”
CONTACT ME
Tags: Energy, Finance, HVAC, HVAC Operations, RE investment
Trends: Read the chart on your buildings energy usage. Monthly charts can usually be found on the monthly utility bills. Your utility company can provide them upon request (usually). If and when you can acquire the hourly or daily usage charts, the pattern of usage can be very revealing about whether your building is running at its best. What does a trend chart look like?
An example of a daily building trend chart
The US Department of Energy has a gather and track data process listing the following steps.
STEP 2: Assess Performance
* 2.1 Gather Data
* 2.2 Establish Baselines
* 2.3 Benchmark
* 2.4 Analyze Data
* 2.5 Technical Assessments & Audits
Here I am only discussing Step 2.1, ‘Gather data’.
Daily and hourly charts are more detailed require additional metering devices. This may be problematic, as mentioned further down.
If your building has a control center, it is very possible, and indeed likely, that the consumption patterns can be found in the computer logs. But in many older buildings, this may be problematic. This is where upgrades should start.
Deciding on what to measure and then installing the meters and using the data correctly is the key. It starts by studying the building systems, and deciding what wires or pipes are carrying the energy in question, and installing the meter(s) in the correct physical location.
Next, installing a communication link between new and old meters and a data collection center, such as a desktop computer, creates the data collection network that is needed. The cost of this approach is extremely reasonable, and in fact, with IP networking, whether hard wired or wireless, it is an incredibly simple and cheap way to get a handle on this.
Having the data in hand will help. But one must understand how the building system in question is being controlled. The charts can be complicated. But decomposing the building systems down to their simplest points will yield a lot of valuable information once it is charted. Having your building engineer or an outside consulting engineer experienced in HVAC controls is often necessary.
More reading about energy measurement and metering and a prior article on measurement in Noels Green Blog.
What are we measuring?
Motors, lights and electric resistance heaters are the major electric energy consumers. Boilers, unit heaters and furnaces are the major gas/oil consumers.
Of course, a major component of electric use is the ‘plug loads’, which is equipment actually plugged in. These are usually in the control of the user/occupants themselves. They include computers, task lighting, televisions, refrigerators and so on.
Electric heaters are often being used by user/occupants who feel cold and do not get their complaints/needs heard or met. This is unfortunately, a ubiquitous problem in the USA, just now getting serious attention after years of ignoring.
The next wave
Now here is a very nice “downstream” application for building information modeling. It is not getting much attention. Yet.
The same Building Information Model which is being used to design and build with, can easily be re-used as a framework for the building control center! Why not have the metering and all other energy systems mapped in the BIM? You would have a ready made view of the Building Energy Consumption!
This has been a theoretical possibility for many decades, but the cost and complexity of it was such that no one besides a NASA or a nuclear research lab could implement it. Now we have a chance to see the possibilities of such high powered data collection and analysis being done on a desktop computer. Hooray for IT!
Tags: Building Automation Systems (BAS), Energy, HVAC Operations
My previous post was a cute diversion from the horrific economic mess we have dug ourselves into. We have watching the policy monkeys in the Fed kick the can for 30 years. But this is not cute. I am sick and tired of the wait. Now they talk about a major, comprehensive energy bill getting through sometime on 2010. Yeah right.
Political paralysis :
Between the “Do-nothing, know-nothings crowd “, and the “Lets bail out Wall Street crowd” , we seem to be witnessing the death of common sense.
Why do we care about having the big banks still extant? Fire the execs and break the banks up!!!
Why is it in the public interest to encourage more drilling for oil?
What are we doing here in the USA?! We haven’t cleaned house yet! We still have to retro-commission what we already have, which is falling apart! Fixing and updating the many millions of old buildings with ORDINARY UPGRADES, will create more jobs and save us $30 billion year, easily. We are already falling behind and its getting worse day by day. And it has very little to do with the ridiculous comments about global warming.
Recommissioning is quite inexpensive (10-30 cents a square foot?). The so-called low hanging fruit can return up to 40% annual ROI , cash on cash!
Think about lighting occupancy sensors. Inexpensive and wireless now.
How about sealing leaky walls and windows and ductwork? Easy to detect with pressure testing, and infrared scanning in cold weather. Also scan your building in the summer, from the inside, shade the sunny windows, and so on.
Do the TV pundits (FoxNews, MSNBC, CNBC, CNN) know this? Do they and the politicians they talk to know much, if ANYTHING about SCIENTIFIC METHOD and the FACTS? No, they are too busy yacking with Sarah Palin. Heck, now they all want to jump on the nuclear generator bandwagon, when just a few years ago they were deathly afraid of them! Fuggedaboutit guys, scientific method will win in the long run, politicians go to the 7th circle of hell!
Add some ground-source heat pumps, simpler to use controls, a little more training for building owners, some heat recovery and we will be on our way. A new and improved, SUSTAINABLE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE.
And do not forget energy independence! We needed that 30 years ago and we are not waiting any longer.
Tags: Political Ignorance
The guys over at Autodesk made this cute animation to drive the point home
The Buildings Sector accounts for about 40% of U.S. Energy, 72% of Electricity, and 34% of Natural Gas use. Building energy costs totaled $390 billion in 2006.
The Buildings Sector accounts for about 40% of U.S. Energy, 72% of Electricity,
and 34% of Natural Gas use. Building energy costs totaled $390 billion in 2006.
Source: Buildings Energy Data Book, Sept. 2008
Tags: Energy, Green Design
Delayed commentary on things learned and shared at a recent RevitDC meeting:
NAMING THINGS and SHARING (it’s a matter of INTEGRITY)
Naming comes up again. “Inconsistent” is the keyword. I am glad that I am not the only one who struggles with it. Shakespeare wrote “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet…” ….NOT IN computing and a BIM (building information model) it WON’T!
Naming standards: a concept that could save billions of dollars!
More often than not, architects have provided drawings with non-standard names for the layers and “blocks” (which are nothing more than buckets). And these often contain attributes with yet more non-standard names. Trouble in data-city. [IMO, Autocad's over-reliance on the two “object-types” they call blocks and layers has created a stunting effect. Many former CAD users will need to unlearn them to use Revit.]
Make no mistake about it: CAD is a form of database, (albeit a limited dataset). But for a database to work decently, the rules must be created, followed, and applied consistently. (Ref: Database design manuals and texts) That said, think about the naming and organization that happens in the contract documents, never mind CAD. An article on BIM that I wrote for fellow engineers, but all stakeholders should read.
Should we require database design courses for BUILDING ARCHITECTS?
The building designers (architects) take notice: a change to a layer name can (and has) wreaked havoc on many things. All the way back to my spreadsheets! For example: countless times, even predating CAD, I have been surprised by changes made by an architect on the room names and numbers, and being forced to MANUALLY repair these on the mechanical, electrical and plumbing documents. Not to mention the many calculations that depend on these. Things like lighting and HVAC calculations. (This issue will hopefully die down in a few years, although I had expected this issue to be solved by now)
Blocks and layers are useful for rough collections of data, but they have always been “rough”. Even after 20 years of the technology. This is one reason why Autodesk bought out Revit. They knew that Autocad could not compare to Revit in the evolution of Building information Modeling.
Data organization apparently is not a favorite topic among architects and engineers. It is more interesting to IT pros and a few more forward-looking architects engineers like myself. But this is no less relevant to the building information model (design and contract documents).
So it happens that subject-matter experts and cross-trained folks, like myself, are breaking through the walls (pun intended) that separate the disciplines. Witness the XML schemas being developed by groups like ASHRAE (who are guiding gbXML) and the Associated General Contractors of America (directing agcXML). These standards will make the BIMs easier to use.
DISTRIBUTED DESIGN
Over the years, we have come to share our drawings by the use of the so-called “external reference”. Autocad called them “X-reference” plans; a way of sharing CAD ‘drawings’ between workstations. Many drawings may use or even “depend” on an X-referenced plan. The beauty of it: make a change in one place, and it will propagate to all the dependent views.
The increased popularity of BIM and BIM software demonstrates that a high priority is being given to real-time sharing. An understanding of the true benefit has FINALLY trickled up to many decision-making managers. No more silos of information! The lighting designer, HVAC designer and the architect can collaborate on the glass and shading all the time, not just at the weekly meeting!!! YAY!!! The cost consultants can do their cost analysis on an ongoing basis, not after the design is 80% complete and when the changes are most costly and disruptive.
What happens as the building design is developed – At RevitDC, I learned that Revit doesn’t implement automatic notification to other team members/users of changes. Someone said, “You don’t know what you don’t know”. YIKES! Something is not right about that.
Copy/monitor issues were mentioned. The use of the word “copy” is a confusing terminology that resembles the CAD problems of updating. Are we not talking about a central database?
I also heard about sluggishness. Why is bandwidth still being discussed ? Paying for a fast Internet connection is cheaper than the mistakes a slow connection can cause. At the Revit DC meeting they discuss only Autodesk Revit. So it appears that it has an ongoing problem with its communication architecture. Come on !!!
The distributed computing model came late to Revit, I think. Graphisoft’s Archicad and Bentley’s Building don’t seem to have this problem. Revit was not originally designed for distributed computing using large databases. It was intended for a smaller audience in the beginning. They had a communication issue at some point and it looks and feels like it has some sort of workaround ever since. Maybe Revit is showing signs of stress and strains and may be replaced?
Archicad seems to have the distributed data and updating part smoothed out. (Did they take a cue from Oracle?) I have heard that Archicad updates the distributed data almost seamlessly. Compare that to Revit, which seems to stop and start. Perhaps it goes back to the project data organization? Technical skill of the managers? Or is the Revit data scheme just plain bottlenecked?
CONNECTIONS
Kimon Onuma (of Onuma Software) mentioned the importance of “connections” at the RevitDC presentation. Connections are key indeed, and when I first heard this idea many years ago, I realized that good design creates good connections between objects, and having the objects themselves is only half the task. Learning this, like designing, is a practiced, intuitive, hands-on experience.
Connecting people and ideas is a cool thing.
Tags: BIM, Green Design, Software
I want to clear the air about something that has been problematic for years. I do not have the standard degree in my field.
Recently I have been in close contact with many engineering, architecture, and construction hiring managers. The communication has revealed much and disappointed me on a number of occasions as I seek a new employer.
It’s the BSME. Employers are fixated on this credential. Filtering talent based on the degree-type parameter is not always justifiable. The filter does not do justice to the tremendous personal capacity and energy I bring to help make things happen. I have not been lucky in my search, anyway.
There is a serious shortage of good engineer talent. I bring a capacity to handle and coordinate many varying and complex issues of building design and making them benefit all.
MEP design is complex, no doubt, and a great degree of trust and reliance is placed on the project engineer. I am intimately familiar with the design process. I know how to make a design constructable. I promote and enforce high efficiency (LEED certification and Energy Star rating), and otherwise, I always strive to deliver “high performance” solutions.
Experience is the great leveler. I want to make this perfectly clear. My 30 years of practical HVAC and electrical design and build experience is at least EQUAL to the knowledge gained from a 5-year BSME. I bring a lot more than a general engineering knowledge to the table.
so how did this issue arise? A: In my life, the engineering curriculums were not readily available to me when I was ready.
I went to college after high school expecting to be an architect. When I attended Miami U, the world was changing and so was I. I was not as great an architectural designer as I thought I was. By the time I graduated, many opportunities and assumptions that seemed inevitable at the beginning had vanished. After I graduated and took my first job as a controls design /draftsman, the path was clearly leading toward consulting engineers, HVAC and electrical design.
When I decided to go back to college for a second degree, in 1996, the electrical engineering (only) curriculum at University of North Florida was small, and seemed stifling. After much deliberation, I concluded that a wider study of information science was more relevant to my future. So the die was cast.
Stymied by details of education again!
I have devoted 30 years… to this field and still the issue of education comes up again and again.
Certain states will not approve my application for licensure, citing my education not being adequate. I do not have a BSME (BS Mechanical Engineering), and my degrees are not both accredited by the correct (EAC) commission of ABET(Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology). My first degree, a 1977 B.S. Environmental Design is not ABET. Ok, understood. On the other hand, my second degree, a 2000 B.S. Computer and Information Science, is ABET accredited, but by the OTHER [read: WRONG] commission (ABET/CAC), which someone decided, in a place far far away, a long time ago, was not an acceptable education for licensing a professional engineer.
NOT FAIR!
Being NCEES registered is not enough, to the surprise of many people.
Many companies need a professional engineer. I am available and ready sometime the question of location comes into play. 30 years of devotion to HVAC engineering counts for nothing in some states. Shame on them.
Here we see a big disconnect between the real world and the rules. The regulations and these firms that blindly follow, would rather have an individual with a BSME and 6 years of experience (to mess it up) than having one with (2) related science degrees and 30 years of directly relevant and professional engineering experience. Even with a superb resume.
Here I stand again, rejected one more time for this sorry excuse.
Tags: Thinking
I have a BS ED, which is a science that encompasses the junction between engineering and architecture. My expertise is in buildings and how they work. I focused all my career on design of the built environment and building systems. I was educated in energy conservation, neighborhood preservation, and solar energy in the 1970s. I was trained to create design solutions for all kinds of advanced issues like
- active and passive solar heating,
- air conditioning,
- historic building preservation
- human factors like indoor air quality
I first learned how to do an energy model with pencil and paper. It was very exciting to learn how to design and justify energy conservation measures. Then the Energy Crisis went away about 1982. The energy recovery methods that I thought were so cool were no longer needed or cost effective. But the career path open to me was still basically HVAC controls and design. So, this is what I did, and this is what I do.
To be sure, most, if not all, of my professional peers are schooled in mechanical engineering. ( and they possess a B.S. Mechanical Engineering). I do not have that specialization. However, I am uniquely qualified and experienced.
Like many professional engineers today, my desire is to serve the design and construction industry. Many people do not remember the 1970s. I prepared for an energy shortage then, and I remain ready to help attack the problems of this new energy crisis.
ASHRAE BUILDING energy rating has been announced.
