Tag: News

Journal Article Assessing ASHRAE Guideline 36 Published

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Former SBS Lab member Cary Faulkner‘s paper titled “Simulation-based assessment of ASHRAE Guideline 36 (G36), considering energy performance, indoor air quality, and control stability” has been published in the journal Building and Environment.

The paper developed a VAV system in Modelica to test the influence of G36 on occupant thermal comfort, indoor air quality, control stability, and energy efficiency for air-side and water-side equipment. They found that although G36 slightly decreases thermal comfort, it significantly reduces annual energy consumption, increases indoor air quality, and eliminates CO2 discomfort through its use of demand controlled ventilation. The paper also found that local feedback control was important to ensure control stability when using G36. This study contributes to the body

This paper was the first to 1. assess the impact of G36 on indoor air quality, 2. consider control sequence interactions in water-side and air-side equipment for the system studied, and 3. examine short-term building behavior to evaluate control stability with G36.

The co-authors of the paper are Robert Lutes, former SBS Lab member Sen Huang, Wangda Zuo, and Draguna Vrabie. You can read the paper for free here until July 15, 2023.

PhD Candidates Cary Faulkner and Katy Hinkelman Awarded Scholarships

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Congratulations to two of our SBS Lab PhD candidates, Cary Faulkner and Katy Hinkelman, for being awarded impressive scholarships this  semester!

Cary Faulkner received the Mechanical Engineering Travel Award from the CU Boulder Mechanical Engineering Department to attend the North American Modelica Conference, which takes place in Dallas, TX on October 26-28, 2022. He will be presenting his paper titled “Tradeoffs Between Indoor Air Quality and Sustainability for Indoor Virus Mitigation Strategies in Office Buildings” at this conference. The award provides Cary $750 towards registration and travel expenses for the conference.

Katy Hinkelman received the Penn State Borda Graduate Scholarship in honor of Gifford H. Albright. This scholarship is intended to honor and encourage graduate students in the architectural engineering department whose academic achievements and current research display a high level of excellence and distinction. Recipients also show promise for significant future achievement in architectural engineering research, and receive a certificate and $2,500 award.

Photos: Katy Hinkelman and Cary Faulker

Paper on Impacts of WELL Certification on Occupant Wellbeing Published in Building and Environment

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Congratulations to Nasim Ildiri on her paper, “Impact of WELL certification on occupant satisfaction and perceived health, well-being, and productivity: A multi-office pre- versus post-occupancy evaluation,” which has been published in the Building and Environment journal.

WELL Building Standard (WELL) is one of the most comprehensive and fastest growing standards that focuses primarily on the health and well-being of building occupants. However, there is a lack of systematic evaluation of the effectiveness of WELL in achieving its goal. The longitudinal study presented in this paper comprehensively analyzed the impacts of WELL certification on a large cohort of occupants from four perspectives: satisfaction with the workplace and perceived health (physical and mental), well-being, and productivity. The authors’ analyses showed that transitioning to WELL certified offices from non-WELL certified offices had a positive impact on occupants across all the studied parameters, with increases in means from pre- to post-occupancy being highly statistically significant.

The full paper can be found here.

Pre-versus post-occupancy occupant satisfaction responses. Box charts graphically indicate the concentration of the responses, where boxes represent the interquartile range (25th and 75th percentiles). Means and medians are displayed by bold dots and solid bars, respectively.

Mayor of Makassar Interviewed about Smart Garden Alley Project

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During his visit to Washington DC this summer as part of the US-ASEAN Smart Cities Partnership, Makassar City Mayor Mohammad Ramdhan Pomanto gave an interview about the Smart Garden Alley project, a collaboration between the city and SBS Lab researchers Katy Hinkelman, Yingli Lou, and Yizhi Yang. Mayor Pomanto explained the motives behind the smart garden alley project, its goals to promote sustainability and urban farming, and the benefits it has had on local residents. The SBS Lab is working with Mayor Pomanto and the city to make these garden alleys “smart” through collecting data from sensor networks to inform urban farming practices and increase comfort in garden alleys. To watch the interview, click here.

Related: Penn State’s article about the mayor’s visit.

 

Lab members, Cary Faulkner, Yingli Lou, and Yizhi Yang received scholarships to attend the 2022 ASHRAE & IBPSA-USA BPAC and SimBuild Conference

Yizhi Yang on
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Congratulation to three lab members, Cary Faulkner, Yingli Lou, and Yizhi Yang, have been selected to receive up to $1500/person in scholarship funds to attend the 2022 ASHRAE & IBPSA-USA BPAC and SimBuild Conference. The theme of the conference, “Better Buildings, Less Carbon: Supporting the Transition to A Clean and Just Climate” focuses on improving the decision-making process through the application of simulation and modeling over the entire building life cycle. More information about the conference can be found here.

 

Lab PI, Dr. Wangda Zuo was invited by NCAR to give a presentation titled “Modeling Sustainable and Resilient Citied: Opportunities for Climate Prediction”

Yizhi Yang on

On July 13, 2022, Lab PI, Dr. Wangda Zuo was invited by National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) to give a presentation titled “Modeling Sustainable and Resilient Citied: Opportunities for Climate Prediction”.

This presentation discussed the needs of both short-term local weather and long-term climate prediction for the modeling of sustainable and resilient cities from an energy infrastructure system modeler’s point of view. Dr. Zuo introduced some ongoing DOE and NSF projects in developing open-source models for sustainable and resilient cities which can be applied in various real-world applications, such as reducing energy consumption via net zero energy communities, minimizing building carbon emissions via emission-conscious operation, retrofitting existing buildings for long-term energy and emission reduction, improving outdoor environmental quality via urban farming in Indonesia, and increasing the resilience of our energy systems for an island community in Florida after Hurricane. During the discussion, the importance and the opportunities of having good short-term weather prediction and long-term climate prediction were revealed in the energy infrastructure models in those applications. More information about our research can be found here.

Lab member, Yingli Lou, had successfully defended her PhD dissertation on “Interconnections of Energy Consumption, Carbon Emission, and Economic Impacts for Sustainable Buildings”.

Yizhi Yang on
07/22: Cake for Yingli’s Ph.D. graduation

SBS lab member Yingli Lou successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis titled Interconnections of Energy Consumption, Carbon Emission, and Economic Impacts for Sustainable Buildings.

This dissertation aims to reveal the connections among building energy consumption, carbon emissions, and related economic impacts.  First, this dissertation developed individualized empirical baselines for existing buildings in the operation stage that are consistent with their modeled baselines in the design stage. Second, this dissertation developed a novel method to predict the carbon emission reduction potential of building retrofits by using dynamically changing electricity emission factors under different clean energy adoption scenarios. At last, this dissertation proposed a systematic economic evaluation method to investigate the economic impacts of carbon emission trading schemes on building retrofits.

Dr. Yingli Lou’s research focuses on building energy performance evaluation, large-scale building energy simulation, and carbon emissions from buildings. During the three years of her Ph.D. study, Yingli published 9 journal papers and developed the open-source Building Energy Models for Commercial Buildings Based on CBECS Data. In addition, she has contributed to multiple grant proposals and secured more than $5M projects from DOE and NSF.

Congratulations to Dr. Lou on this well-deserved success and wish her all the best in her professional career!

2      2022.07: Celebrate Yingli’s graduation

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!

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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