Making green buildings intelligent: how to link green buildings and the Smart Grid
By Patrick Mazza
Apr 23, 2008 - 4:00:00 AM
Making green buildings intelligent: how to link green buildings and the Smart Grid
A new energy ecosystem is emerging that connects smart, green buildings with a smart, green grid to optimize energy flows. Since commercial and industrial buildings represent around 40 % of
U.S. energy use, and homes another 30 %, this represents a significant opportunity for energy efficiency and mass-scale renewable generation.
But creating a new, green energy ecosystem requires linking today’s heavily "stove piped" separate systems within buildings, as well creating linking between buildings and the grid. It also means expanding the definition of green buildings to include the digital smarts that connect diverse systems. The Green Intelligent Buildings Conference (see link below) in
Baltimore April 2-3 focused on ways to cut through "stovepipes" and build those new linkages.
Smart Grid builders and the smart building industry must unite
"We need to find ways to make the grid smarter, to make buildings smarter, and to have these smarts communicate with each other," keynoter Jeffrey Harris of the
Alliance to Save Energy (ASE) told the conference. This will require new technologies and partnerships that cross traditional boundaries, according to Harris, who is also the ASE vice president for programs. "We need not just utilities but private industry to be involved."
One key area where new partnerships are needed is within the building industry itself: between green builders and providers of building intelligence.
"The sad truth is that many green buildings today are neither highly efficient nor particularly intelligent, and this is a missed opportunity," wrote Paul Ehrlich of the Building Intelligence Group in an article previewing the conference. (See link to Elhrlich’s article below.) "We have the potential to deliver green intelligent buildings that are sustainable as well as able to deliver high-performance, low-energy usage."
The conference primarily drew representatives of the building automation industry, which has been installing increasingly capable Building Management Systems ever since the 1970s oil shocks spurred a new emphasis on efficiency. Ironically, as technologies improved through the '80s and '90s, declining energy prices slowed the drive to efficiency. Now those trends are sharply reversing, and technologies are reaching unprecedented capabilities while green building is booming.
"What we're trying to figure out is how green building links with intelligence," said J. Christopher Larry of Teng & Associates in a presentation on the topic. Director of Energy Engineering for the design firm, he added, "Green building is growing so rapidly, the intelligent building industry wants to jump in."
Ratings standards must reward smart building systems
Today’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building standards (see LEED link below) do not directly credit building automation, though they do credit the efficiencies automation can provide. A problem is that building intelligence does not have a singular rating system. The Continental Automated Buildings Association trade group (see CABA link below) is promoting its Building IQ metric and working with the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) to update its LEED standards. A revised LEED is expected in June to provide more credit for building systems. CABA is also staging its own "Convergence of Green and
Intelligent
Buildings" research initiative.
Smart buildings meet the Smart Grid
"I firmly believe smart buildings are green buildings," said Jack McGowan, head of Energy Control Inc., and president of GridWise Architecture Council (GWAC). GWAC is a U.S. Department of Energy effort aimed at developing protocols to link various pieces of Smart Grid technologies, and a conference sponsor.
McGowan called out goals for significant growth in net-zero energy buildings enshrined in the new Energy Independence and Security Act (EISA) passed by Congress last year. Such buildings are energy generators as well as users, providing as much energy to the grid as they draw from it.
"The idea that buildings could give and take energy -- that's where the opportunity presents itself," he said. With growth in net-zero energy buildings, "We're going to see more emphasis on intelligence in buildings" to measure and manage energy and revenue flows. "My whole vision is having the smart building meet the Smart Grid," said McGowan. (
See
GridWise
Green
Building link below.)
McGowan made those comments in a session on demand response (DR) systems, which pay energy users to control grid power demand. At this moment, according to McGowan, DR is the best example of an effective Smart Grid business model. It could substantially reduce the $900 billion in grid investment needed over the next 20 years by cutting need for costly peak power infrastructure, he maintained. He briefly presented an early smart building-Smart Grid marriage taking place at the
University of
New Mexico (see New Mexico Business Weekly article link below), where his company and a series of partners are creating a campus-wide network of smart buildings, which manages loads in coordination with grid needs and stresses.
The DR business case
Following McGowan was Matt Kastantin of EnerNOC, a company that aggregates DR resources for grid operators. He provided solid evidence for the DR business case. Ten percent of infrastructure costs are spent to meet peak demand that occurs less than one percent of the time, he noted. So grid operators have good reason to reduce peaks. In 2007, northeast
U.S. transmission manager PJM Interconnect paid customers $107 M for reducing loads.
Kastantin noted several ways in which DR provides green benefits. Though some demand is shifted to other times, some simply is reduced. In addition, the peak power generation that is avoided generally comes from the most polluting plants. Perhaps most significantly, the systems that enable DR are a cornerstone of overall energy efficiency programs – they provide detailed energy use information that make for smart energy decisions overall. For example, smart systems reveal when buildings are over-ventilated.
To this point, much DR has been manual. A building manager gets a call and literally walks around turning off switches. Smart buildings will have digital systems that automate the process. In 2007, Constellation NewEnergy created the New Energy Alliance (see New Energy Alliance link below) to push automated DR forward. The alliance brings together equipment manufacturers, building automation firms, system integrators and software businesses "to put the pieces together," said Peter Kelly-Detwiler, a Constellation Energy vice president, “. . . to integrate disparate controls . . . in a way it hasn't happened before. Ultimately, the integration of all these pieces sets the stage for us to work together."
Smart Grid and smart buildings – a recipe for real benefits
Technology innovations are making investments more economically practical. They center on a combination of web-based protocols that integrate disparate control systems with wireless technologies that eliminate the need for costly re-wiring. For instance, Merwin presented a new Tridium software platform called Sedona that wirelessly configures different systems to be able to talk with one another. David Klee, a marketing lead for building intelligence heavyweight Johnson Controls, said the combination of wireless networks and convergence of building systems are two of the most profound trends in the field.
Smart buildings and the Smart Grid are two elements of the digital information revolution that are spreading tendrils toward one another. As they meet, they will provide huge benefits in terms of more efficient energy use, integration of on-site energy demand and generation with the grid, and overall better functioning buildings that are better and safer places to work and live. The Green Intelligent Buildings Conference showed how these potentials are becoming an on-the-ground reality in many places. A new green energy ecosystem will be the result.
Email Patrick Mazza
Green Intelligent Buildings Conference website
Paul Erlich article on building automation
LEED Rating Systems info at USGBC website
CABA website
GridWise Green Building article
New Mexico Business Weekly article
NewEnergy Alliance website
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