High-Performance Integrated Window and Facade Solutions for California Buildings
High-Performance, Integrated Window and Façade Solutions for California Buildings
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Recipient
Berkeley, CA
Recipient Location
9th
Senate District
14th
Assembly District
$3,000,000
Amount Spent
Completed
Project Status
Project Result
Project completed in March 2019. This project advanced knowledge and technologies in five areas: highly insulating windows; energy recovery-based façade ventilation systems (low-energy air flow through the façade); daylight redirecting systems (sunlight from windows reflected deep into the building); daylighting and shading optimization methods (daylight and solar heat gain models for simulating light-scattering shading and daylighting technologies); and integrated window and facades through advanced controls. Since these technologies are early prototypes, the team is continuing to pursue commercial development partners. The California Partnership for Advanced Windows was also formed to identify and overcome market barriers to facilitate market transformation toward highly insulating windows.
The Issue
Building envelope systems directly affect electricity use for lighting and heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC). These systems have a major impact on annual energy use, load shape, and peak demand. Better envelope system designs can play a significant role in helping to achieve state policy goals such as zero net energy (ZNE) buildings by 2030 and capturing aggressive savings in existing buildings beyond current best practice. However, many potentially high performance window and building envelope technologies and systems have struggled to gain significant market share due in part to cost and the complexity of providing market-ready business solutions.
Project Innovation
This project develops, validates and quantifies energy impacts of a new generation of high performance building envelope systems such as highly insulating windows, novel window-integrated local ventilation, and dynamic daylight-redirection. It will provide design and management toolkits that will enable the building industry to meet challenging energy performance goals leading to zero net energy buildings. This project considers cost-effective integrated system approaches to reduce energy use associated with HVAC and lighting while improving occupant comfort.
Project Benefits
This project further developed highly insulating windows (advanced TRL to 7), window-integrated ventilation systems (advanced TRL to 6), dynamic daylight redirecting systems (advanced TRL to 4), and dynamic, integrated window and facades through advanced controls (advanced TRL to 5). Technology enhancements include thermal improvements to glazing and frame, better management of air flow, ventilation and heat exchange in perimeter zones, doubling the depth of the perimeter zone that is effectively daylighted, and active load management controls in response to whole-building energy and grid needs. This project also improved modeling capabilities for advanced shading and daylighting systems which is a key interest to DOE moving forward. Project simulations indicate these technologies could reduce HVAC energy use up to 39 percent, and lighting energy use up to 54 percent.
Affordability
These technologies are estimated to be capable of reducing statewide energy use by 6,118 gigawatt-hours, peak electricity demand by 2,250 megawatts, and statewide electricity costs by $867 million/year assuming 75 percent market penetration in new and existing commercial buildings.
Key Project Members
Stephen Selkowitz
Subrecipients
Gregory John Ward - Anyhere Software
John Breshears
Match Partners
United States Department of Energy
