WASHINGTON D.C. --
The Research Support Facility (RSF) at the U.S. Department of
Energy's (DOE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has hosted
thousands of visitors since it opened as one of the world's largest high
performance office buildings. Generating buzz about the energy savings
possible in commercial buildings is exactly what DOE and NREL have been
aiming for.
Energy-efficient
features found in NREL’s Research Support Facility, including
daylighting, are being replicated in other buildings across the country.
Credit: Dennis Schroeder
"There are days when I think I should quit my job and just be a tour
guide," jokes NREL Senior Research Engineer Shanti Pless. "But I'm
willing to do it because I see the impact taking people through this
building has on our future energy savings."
Energy savings is precisely what the RSF demonstrates every day as
1,800 NREL staff start their workdays in a 360,000 square-foot Class A
office building that generates as much electricity as it uses, thanks to
rooftop photovoltaics. Even after potential visitors hear that the RSF
was built at the same price as a non-efficient building, they can be
skeptical — until they see it with their own eyes.
"Seeing is believing," Pless said. "Everyone who comes through the
RSF realizes this can be done and this is what it looks like. And they
learn that they don't have to do something new — they can replicate a
lot of what NREL's already done."
Commercial buildings represent roughly one-fifth of U.S. energy
consumption. Still, the perception remains that it's easier and less
expensive to build a building the way it's always been done rather than
putting in the work to make the leap to high performance office
buildings.
"This high performance, net-zero facility is one of those things that
wouldn't have come to fruition if a national lab hadn't demonstrated
that it is possible," said Ron Judkoff, NREL's principal program manager
for buildings research and development. "And, as a result of DOE and
NREL's leadership, and the building energy design tools that NREL is
producing, industry is starting to recognize it can be done as well."
Just over two years since the opening of the first phase of the RSF,
Pless notes that the ripple effect is reaching deep into industry. "The
effect is across the whole spectrum, including architects, engineers,
and subcontractors," he said.
Denis
Hayes, NREL's second director and Earth Day founder, visited the lab and
took a tour of the RSF. His current project, the Bullitt Center,
aspires to be the greenest commercial building in the world. Credit:
Dennis Schroeder
Changing the Rules to Build in Seattle
Even when you are enthusiastic about constructing the most
energy-efficient building possible, roadblocks can appear where least
expected.
The 50,000 square-foot
Bullitt Center in
Seattle, Washington, is being built with one goal in mind — to be the
greenest, most energy-efficient commercial building in the world. Like
NREL, the Bullitt Foundation is looking to change the way buildings are
designed, built, and operated. The building design team is working to
meet the ambitious goals of the
Living Building Challenge.
The Bullitt Center will generate as much energy from rooftop
photovoltaics each year as the six-story structure uses; the catch is
that Seattle is notorious for its lack of sunshine. The building also
will collect all of its water, including drinking water, from the rain
that falls on its roof — which will then be stored in a 56,000-gallon
cistern. Once the water is used inside the building, it will be treated
and then returned to the soil. More than 1,000 building components were
researched to make sure nothing in the building released any toxic
material at any time during its life cycle. It is the world's first
six-story structure with composting toilets. Built to survive major
earthquakes, the Center has a design life of 250 years.
According to Bullitt Foundation President Denis Hayes, the building
faced more legal and financial challenges than technical obstacles.
"We were shocked to learn that it is flat-out illegal to build this
sort of ultra-green building in any city in America," Hayes said. "But
Seattle changed its building code to allow super-green buildings to meet
performance standards as an alternative to prescriptive standards. A
building built to code is generally the lousiest building that is not
illegal to build. We wanted the design flexibility to construct a
building that used less than one-fourth the energy of a code building."
The city's political leaders and planning officials weren't the only ones Hayes had to convince.
"We were also constrained by the fact that most banks wouldn't lend
us any money. When the appraiser asked, 'What are your comps?' We didn't
have any," Hayes said. "No bank saw any value in producing all our own
electricity, our own water, treating our own waste on site. Certainly no
bank was prepared to finance the extra cost of a 250-year building. The
discounted present value of a dollar received 250 years from now, or
even 100 years from now, is zero. Modern finance is deeply biased
against durability.
"We are going to be working with banks, appraisers, and real estate
professionals to bring them through the building and use it as a magnet
to help think through how we can overcome these obstacles and create a
situation where this sort of building becomes easier to finance and
build than an inefficient building," Hayes added.
Private sector obstacles aside, it was helpful to see that NREL had
successfully completed a high performance office building, Hayes said.
"Visiting NREL was reassuring. Somebody had already shown how to meet
some of the goals that we were aspiring toward. When something already
exists, you know that what you are trying to do is possible."
Similarities between the Bullitt Center and the RSF include an
emphasis on daylighting. The Center features large, 10-foot-high windows
weighing 700 pounds each. They open to provide not only lighting but
natural ventilation. The windows will be hooked up to a series of
sensors that feed into the building's control system to tell what the
indoor and outdoor temperatures are, how fast the wind is blowing,
whether it's raining, and how much carbon dioxide is in the air, all of
which let the building's "brain" determine whether the windows should be
open or closed.
Staffers working next to the window can override the system, but only
for 30 minutes at a time to optimize the building's performance. Every
person working in the building will be within 30 feet of an operable
window.
Plug load management is something that the Bullitt Center design team took into greater consideration after visiting NREL.
"It was very impressive, the degree to which NREL is monitoring the
things that people are doing on their side of the plugs," Hayes said.
"We'd known that we could do dramatic things with efficient
refrigerators, dishwashers, and lighting, but the fact that NREL was
paying so much attention to the real work side of the house — the
computers, monitors, printers, and task lights — caused us to go back
and look at our IT really carefully."
"I'm thrilled that NREL is jumping out in front on issues like this,"
said Hayes, who was lab director of the Solar Energy Research Institute
in the late 1970s and early 1980s, prior to the name change to NREL in
1991. "NREL's research and development has always been its strength, but
there's something about actually living what you preach. And, just as
important, NREL paid special attention to the economics of it."
The first tenants of the Bullitt Center will begin moving in next
month; the grand opening is scheduled for April 22, which is Earth Day.
The
Bullitt Center plans to generate as much energy from rooftop
photovoltaics each year as the six-story structure uses — even in
Seattle, which is notorious for its lack of sunshine. Courtesy of the
Bullitt Center/John Stamets
Planning a High Performance Building for Salt Lake City
Seattle isn't the only city that will see NREL's vision on its skyline.
"It may sound corny, but after seeing the RSF, it really was the
first day of the second half of my career," said Kenner Kingston,
director of sustainability for ARCHITECTURAL NEXUS, INC. "I saw the
integration at RSF, the total comprehensive thinking, and thought, 'I've
got to get involved in a project that's going in this direction.'"
When a municipal client in the Salt Lake City, Utah, area asked him
to design an administrative office space, Kingston knew the RSF would
help sell his client on the idea of going for high performance design.
"Usually, when I see another net-zero building talked about, it's always
on the coast or in Hawaii — somewhere with a temperate climate. The RSF
is particularly relevant because it is in a high mountain desert."
Kingston also brought his client out to the RSF so they could see
firsthand what was possible. "They came back with validation, feeling
like it was what they wanted to do. The RSF became the measuring stick
that was referred to over and over again while planning the project."
As was the case for the RSF, daylighting is an absolute for the
building design that Kingston is working on. "On this project, the ratio
of closed to open offices is 50-50," Kingston said. "This created a
unique challenge since we were trying to put the closed offices on the
north side of the building; in this case, we needed two north sides."
To solve the dilemma, the design now includes a capped light well in
the center of the building so the planners could have two north
elevations. The light well is unconditioned space that draws the sun
five stories into the building. "It makes the daylighting possible from
the inside of the building, and we don't get the temperature swings of
an exterior space," he added. "Even after I'm done with this project,
I'll be on the hunt for the next net-zero opportunity in our neck of the
woods, and I'll again use the RSF as an example of what can be done."
Artist
rendering of the proposed Cornell NYC Tech campus, which is planned for
the southern end of New York City’s Roosevelt Island. Cornell
University is carefully planning out a 12-acre campus focused on being a
model of sustainable development. Courtesy of Kilograph 2012
Cornell University Looks to Build a Living Lab in NYC
An opportunity to build a campus in the heart of New York City
doesn't come along often. But on the southern end of Roosevelt Island,
administrators with Cornell University are carefully planning out a
12-acre campus focused on educating the next generation of students to
conduct cutting-edge research on a living model of sustainable
development.
The Cornell NYC Tech campus will be built out in several phases, with
groundbreaking for the first phase slated for 2014. Part of the first
phase will be a four-story, 150,000-square-foot academic facility that
will be the flagship building for the campus. The first academic
building is being designed to be high performing and very energy
efficient. On-site renewable energy is being studied to determine the
feasibility of making it net-zero energy.
"We had an opportunity with a whole new campus to figure out a plan
to make our first net-zero academic building," said Robert R. Bland,
senior director for energy and sustainability with Cornell University.
"We've had quite a bit of input from NREL, and my visit to the RSF
showed me the opportunities to be deeply energy efficient. The New York
State Energy Research and Development Authority is partnering with us
and contributing funding to the design effort."
The first academic building will use multiple approaches for
achieving energy efficiency, including photovoltaics and geothermal.
When complete, Cornell NYC Tech will include approximately 2 million
square feet of academic, residential, and corporate research and
development space and will house more than 2,000 graduate students along
with faculty and staff.
But even more exciting than the opportunity to create a sustainable
campus is the opportunity to educate and guide students at the
university. "We would like to make this a living laboratory for graduate
students to research and advance our academic mission in the built
environment," Bland said. "We want to make it inspirational and
educational."
Already, seven teams of students are involved in the campus planning
and design. In the future, the buildings will be studied with intensive
energy modeling and monitoring. "We'll do real-time monitoring, and we
intend to create a smart microgrid on campus," Bland added. "It's really
exciting to be able to work on a new academic model."
All these examples mean Pless sees a road to success for high
performance buildings — and fewer days as a tour guide for the RSF.
"I'm excited to see the industry start to pick this up and run with
it, without us being actively involved in each project," Pless said.
"When I no longer have to answer calls about projects or give tours,
I'll know that we've succeeded."
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2013/01/rsf-influences-new-high-performance-buildings?page=2
