Researchers from PNNL have been assessing installation and use of electric heat pumps in an Alaskan community that relies on fuel oil for heat. The resulting information could advance electrification in cold rural areas across the nation.
PNNL helps deliver efficiency-related rules and requirements that steadily improve performance of America’s buildings, saving energy and costs and reducing carbon emissions.
Mandy Mahoney, director of the DOE Building Technologies Office, visited PNNL in late November. One key agenda item involved meeting with staff for a discussion of effective equity and justice integration in buildings-related research.
Leaders from the DOE Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy visited PNNL October 19–20 for a firsthand look at capabilities and research progress.
PNNL’s Andrea Mengual co-chaired a working group that produced Building Performance Standards: A Technical Resource Guide. PNNL’s Kim Cheslak, Bing Liu, and Jian Zhang contributed to the effort.
The results of this study are consistent with the idea that the stress of chronic salinity exposure changes tree leaf shape and function, weakening their physiology and setting in motion processes that lead to death.
Through collaboration with the Department of Homeland Security Soft Target Engineering to Neutralize the Threat Reality Center of Excellence, PNNL is advancing research and development of tools and methodologies to protect crowded places.
PNNL’s extensive portfolio of buildings-grid research included three projects that helped answer some of the technical questions related to leveraging energy consumption in buildings to enhance grid operations.
PNNL’s ARENA test bed analyzes how electrical cables degrade in extreme environments and how nondestructive examination inspection technologies can detect and locate damage.
The Northwest Connected Communities Summit brought together representatives of five Department of Energy-funded Connected Communities Projects to share ideas and discuss potential collaboration opportunities.
Staff at PNNL recently completed a report highlighting commercial products enabled through projects funded by the Department of Energy’s Building Technologies Office.
Scientists used a new analysis approach—coupled laser ablation sampling and capillary absorption spectroscopy—to gather more information on how the rhizosphere processes carbon.
The Simple Building Calculator, developed at PNNL, meets a need for a quick, interactive, and economic method to evaluate energy use—and potential savings from efficiency measures—in simple commercial buildings.
PNNL’s Ján Drgoňa and Draguna Vrabie are part of an international team that authored a most-cited paper on Model Predictive Control, an approach for improving operations, energy efficiency, and comfort in buildings.
