At kW Engineering, we create a lot of detailed building models to characterize the energy use of new and existing buildings, which can be a time and effort-intensive task. With recent advances in building energy modeling tools, modelers now have a code-based access point that...
A few years ago, I helped put together an I2SL guide for facilities staff who find themselves conducting energy projects in lab buildings – a daunting prospect for many! The guide contained a host of strategies for helping retrofit projects proceed successfully and to the...
I think that the energy efficiency industry needs a big wake-up call around changes that are coming to the world of refrigerants. In last week’s post, I discussed how these changes are going to hit the commercial refrigeration market. But the coming changes to HVAC...
California is often on the “bleeding edge” of environmental policy, a position that is frankly part of the reason why I live here. But sometimes, that stance can be painful and put local businesses in a position where they need to bear the brunt of...
SkySpark collects and stores data from any number of sources and provides an open analytics platform that can be programmed to automatically make sense of the data and provide insights on a building or a portfolio of buildings. This open platform can be customized to a...
On January 1st of 2020, new changes go into effect for Title-24, California’s energy efficiency standard for commercial buildings. Neil Bulger has a nice summary of changes to HVAC, and a bit on lighting. But what’s happening with refrigeration in supermarkets? There are two important changes...
You created a regression model of your building’s energy use and now want to use its predictive capabilities. How do you go about assessing your model’s predictive power? As I mentioned in an earlier post, you want to steer away from focusing on a singular...
I first encountered condensing boiler woes when conducting an energy audit for a winery which had retrofitted its conventional boilers to condensing boilers. Operating with a supply water temperature of 180°F and a return water temperature of 140°F, the boilers never operated in condensing mode...
Trend data analysis one of the most powerful approaches for finding wasted energy in buildings. Each year the amount of data that your building automation system (BAS) can provide is more – literally faster, better and cheaper. But how to you make sense of your...
Graph credit: www.marketwatch.com One of my mantras this year at kW has been to try to minimize uncertainty. Uncertainty is bad for business – it stalls decisions, makes your colleagues nervous, anxious and stressed, and generally sows the seeds for trouble. Well best laid plans… between...