Category: ireland

SBS Lab Team Attends US-Ireland Workshop on Multi-Scale Building Energy Performance Prediction

Nathan Kurtz on

Nearly 30 experts from the US, Republic of Ireland, and Northern Ireland attended the U.S.-Ireland Workshop on Multi-Scale Building Energy Performance Prediction at the University College Dublin. The participants were from a wide variety of backgrounds including government, academia, national laboratories, industries, and non-profit organizations. They discussed the challenges and opportunities in modeling for building energy performance in the three jurisdiction. We are happy to see this workshop be so successful and look forward to the continued collaborations and new collaborations that can come from this.

The workshop was a spin-off of our joint project “U.S.-Ireland R&D Partnership: Intelligent Data Harvesting for Multi-Scale Building Stock Classification and Energy Performance Prediction” with James O’Donnell at University College Dublin and Neil Hewitt at Ulster University. We were glad to have Ph.D. students Rosina Adhikari and Jiyuan Sui as well as undergraduate students Almila Meng and Alex Pan join the workshop. This was a great opportunity for several of our students to learn from the experts. We are extremely grateful to National Science Foundation, Science Foundation Ireland, and Department of Economy NI for sponsoring this research.

Research Paper Published As Part Of Our Joint U.S.-Ireland R&D Project

Nathan Kurtz on

We are delighted to announce that another research paper from our joint U.S.-Ireland R&D Project was published in the Data in Brief Journal. The paper titled “Urban Residential Building Stock Synthetic Datasets for Building Energy Performance Analysis” proposes an urban building stock dataset consisting of synthetic input and output data for the energy simulation of 1 million buildings. It contains four different residential types: terraced, detached, semi-detached, and bungalow. It includes 19 inputs which include building component U-values, HVAC parameters, and renewable system parameters.

This dataset will be a valuable resource for researchers, practitioners, and policymakers seeking to boost sustainability and energy efficiency in urban building environments. It also holds potential for future research in the field of building energy modeling and analysis. The work is part of the U.S.-Ireland R&D Partnership and Next Generation Energy Systems (NexSys) project funded by the Science Foundation in the Republic of Ireland (RoI), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Department for the Economy NI in Northern Ireland.

We appreciate this opportunity for collaboration and look forward to future papers and joint research opportunities as we continue this partnership.

SBS Lab US-Ireland R&D project team at Ulster University

Nathan Kurtz on

Last week, Prof. Zuo and Ph.D. student Yizhi Yang attended the joint project meeting at Ulster University. They were able to meet and discuss their joint US-NI-Rol project “Intelligent Data Harvesting for Multi-Scale Building Stock Classification and Energy Performance Prediction.” While the SBS team was in Belfast, Northern Ireland they were able to visit and tour Ulster University’s heat pump facility. The team also met with officers from the Department for the Economy NI to better tune their research to support the policy-making process regarding energy-efficient buildings and renewable energy.

This research project is supported by National Science Foundation (NSF), Department for the Economy NI, and Science Foundation Ireland (SFI). The project is a collaborative project with Pennsylvania State University, University College Dublin, and Ulster University. The project aims to reduce residential building energy consumption and related greenhouse gas emissions across the three jurisdictions. This goal is being achieved by using the expertise in green engineering from the NI team, building modeling and machine learning from the US team, and the information theory of the RoI team. We are thankful for the warm and generous welcome from the Ulster University team and excited to continue working with all parties on this important research project.

 

SBS Lab Members’ Novel Method to Assess Carbon Reduction Potential of Buildings Published

Julia Ho on

Yizhi Yang, Yingli Lou, Chris Payne, and Yunyang He have developed a model to “comprehensively assess the long-term carbon intensity reduction potential of aggregated commercial buildings on a county-by-county basis in the continental U.S.” Yizhi Yang is a current PhD student in the SBS Lab, and Yingli Lou and Yunyang He are lab graduates. Their paper summarizing the model and its application to U.S. K-12 buildings has been published in the Energy and Buildings Journal and is available for free until March 11, 2023.

Their case study weighed the effects of climate, energy sources, and building retrofits on K-12 buildings in 14 different climate zones from 2022 to 2050. By considering these effects simultaneously, they were able to predict what retrofits would be most effective and when; for example, they predicted that in 2022 reducing lighting power density in Oregon schools would most effectively increase energy savings, but in 2050 improving roof insulation will be a more effective energy saver because Oregon will have transitioned to clean energy sources for the majority of their electricity. They also concluded that there was a wide range of energy-saving potential across schools and that, depending on the primary energy source, energy savings potentials are not guaranteed to decrease (the example of this phenomenon being Mississippi’s predicted 2044 nuclear plant shutdown, which might be replaced with coal and natural gas plants.)

This case study demonstrates the capabilities of the author’s model, which can help policymakers, engineers, and community members estimate the impacts of different retrofits on buildings in their communities. Future work includes considering future weather predictions in the model, potential policies such as a carbon tax, and increasing the accuracy of buildings estimated in the model with building codes and climate zone geometrical information for climate reduction.

You can read the paper here: https://lnkd.in/efqdSVTr

Paper on The Economic Impacts of Carbon Emission Trading Scheme on Building Retrofits has been published in Building and Environment

Yizhi Yang on

As a popular emission reduction tool, the carbon emission trading scheme (ETS) can potentially add an economic incentive for building owners to retrofit buildings in addition to the cost savings in energy. As a part of a comprehensive research project funded by US National Science Foundation, the Science Foundation Ireland, and the Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland, our team has investigated the additional economic benefits of building retrofits from carbon credits via the ETS. We found that carbon prices have significant economic impacts on building retrofits. With the relatively low forecasted time-variant carbon prices (around 10 USD per ton), the economic impacts of ETS on building retrofits are small. When carbon prices increase, the impacts of ETS would be up to 25% for 50 USD per ton (current prices in European Union) and 51% for 100 USD per ton.

This work has been published under the title “The economic impacts of carbon emission trading scheme on building retrofits:  A case study with U.S. medium office buildings” in the journal Building and Environment. The full paper is available here.

The first author of this paper, Yingli Lou, is a Ph.D. student in the SBS lab, where her research focuses on large-scale building energy simulation and carbon emissions from buildings.

Congratulations to Yingli on publishing this paper!

carbonTrading

Paper on Tradeoffs Among Indoor Air Quality, Financial Costs, and CO2 Emissions for HVAC Operation Strategies to Mitigate Indoor Virus in U.S. Office Buildings has been published in Building and Environment

Yizhi Yang on

It is challenging to provide excellent indoor air environment, while saving operational cost and reducing CO2 emission. In this work, we explored the tradeoffs among indoor air quality, financial costs, and CO2 emissions for HVAC operation strategies to mitigate indoor virus in U.S. office buildings. New evaluation metrics are created to consider the comprehensive impact of improving IAQ on costs and CO2 emissions, using dynamic emission factors for electricity generation depending on the location. HVAC operation strategies are studied in five different locations across the United States, with distinct climates and electricity sources. In four of the five locations, MERV 13 filtration offers the best improvement in IAQ per increase in costs and emissions relative to MERV 10. The exception is the mildest climate of San Diego, where use of 100% outdoor air provides the best IAQ with a limited increase in costs and emissions.

This work has been published under the title “Tradeoffs Among Indoor Air Quality, Financial Costs, and CO2 Emissions for HVAC Operation Strategies to Mitigate Indoor Virus in U.S. Office Buildings ” in the journal Building and Environment. The full paper is available at this link.

The first author of this paper, Cary Faulkner, is a Ph.D. student in the SBS lab and his research interests include building system modeling, computational fluid dynamics, indoor environment modeling, and machine learning.

Congratulations to Cary on publishing this paper!

HVAC operation strategies

SBS Lab held an in-person event to share our findings on U.S. – Ireland R&D partnership project with collaborators.

wmz5108 on

SBS Lab met with our collaborators from Ireland last week to discuss the project milestones. In this two-day international event, SBS Lab talked about our research findings and direction of the project with our collaborators. This was the first time that SBS Lab hosted a face-to-face event with international collaborators in the past two years.

For more information about the project and our collaborators please visit here.

 

sbs lab