Latest News From ASERTTI
Posted: May 10, 2012
ASERTTI NEWS
ASERTTI Buildings Committee Webinar: May 21, 2012
Guest Speakers: Vince Scarfo, Director of Government
Relations at GE and Mark Johnson of Accountmark, Inc
Please join us for the next ASERTTI Buildings Committee
meeting featuring a webinar presentation by Vince Scarfo,
Director of Government Relations at General Electric Co.
(GE), and Mark Johnson of Accountmark, Inc. The guest
speakers will present on the use of infrared thermography to
identify building energy efficiency retrofit needs.
Discussion of the committee’s upcoming poster presentation
to the ACEEE Summer Study on Energy Efficiency in Buildings
will follow the speaker Q&A.
Date:
Monday, May 21
Time:
1:00 PM Eastern Time (10:00 AM Pacific Time)
Call-in Number:
1-866-613-5217; passcode: 5271278
Join the
Webinar:
http://www.800rollcall.com/webpresenter; participant
code: 5271278
If you have any questions, please contact ASERTTI Program
Director, Sarah uen Blanchard at
sarah@asertti.org or
303-425-6800 ext. 463.
Save the Date for the 2012 ASERTTI Fall Meeting –
October 10-12 - Seattle, WA
Please mark your calendars for the 2012 ASERTTI Fall
Meeting, hosted by the
Washington
State University Energy Program, October 10-12, 2012 in
Seattle, Washington. We hope you can join us for this
two and a half day clean energy event. The agenda will
include discussions and presentations addressing current
research, site visits to industrial facilities, and
networking with ASERTTI members and guests. Agenda,
lodging, and travel details will be posted on the
ASERTTI website
as they become available. If you have any questions,
please contact ASERTTI Executive Director, David Terry at
dterry@asertti.org
or 703-395-1076.
New Case Study Released: Automating Gas Leak Survey
at Intermountain Gas Company
Gas Technology Institute (GTI) and Ubisense Inc. announce
the availability of a case study revealing that
Intermountain Gas Company (Intermountain) was able to obtain
a 20% improvement in efficiency with field survey crews, in
addition to automating records to assist in meeting
compliance requirements, by implementing Ubisense VeroTrack®
technology. Cost reductions were found in the elimination of
manual documentation, optimized navigation, and integration
with compliance management. GTI worked with Ubisense
to demonstrate that the modern gas detection devices could
connect with GPS devices for accurate location, and store
the information in a database to track compliance. Based on
the success of the Intermountain project, GTI is assisting
other gas utilities as they evaluate the VeroTrack solution
to determine how it can to improve compliance documentation
while also simultaneously gaining productivity. The
study, entitled "VeroTrack®
Automated Survey Tracking - Business Case and Return on
Investment Calculation for Full Implementation at
Intermountain," is available on GTI's website.
LIPA’s Efficiency Long Island Program Helps East
Williston Schools Go Green and Save Money
The Long Island Power Authority (LIPA) in its continuing
effort to help Long Island schools go green presented the
East Williston Union Free School District with a LIPA
Efficiency Long Island rebate for $138,965 after completing
a major energy-efficient lighting project. The district
contracted with Honeywell to upgrade all three of the
schools with energy-efficient lighting and occupancy
sensors. This project will help the district significantly
lower operating costs and save approximately $75,000
annually. Through these improvements, it is estimated that
the East Williston School District will save up to 420,000
kilowatt hours (kWh) per year and reduce its peak electric
demand by an estimated 162 kW kilowatts (kW), which is
equivalent to removing 40 cars from the road each year.
New York’s Largest On-Farm Biogas Power Project
Generates Renewable Energy for Nearly 1,000 Homes
U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) joined state and local
officials this week at the grand opening of New York State’s
largest on-farm, ‘co-digestion’ biogas power project,
marking an important boost to the state’s renewable energy
production and sustainability efforts. The facility is
located at Synergy Dairy, a 2,000-head dairy farm in
Covington, Wyoming County, southwest of Rochester. NYSERDA
is providing $1 million in incentives for the facility.
CH4 Biogas LLC built,
owns and operates the project under the name Synergy Biogas
LLC. The Synergy Biogas LLC plant also is the state’s first
biogas project specifically designed for the co-digestion,
or processing, of animal and food wastes. By anaerobically
digesting waste from local food processors in addition to
the dairy’s cow manure, the 425 ton per day, mixed-waste
facility is more cost-effective. The facility has created
about a half dozen jobs while enhancing the efficiency of
the 30-employee farm’s operations and sustaining area food
manufacturers and haulers. The project is expected to
reduce the dairy farm’s baselood greenhouse gas emissions by
about 8,500 tons of CO2 annually, which is equivalent to the
CO2 emissions of 1,700 automobiles. The facility also will
produce an estimated 17,500 cubic yards of bedding material
for livestock while reducing manure odors and helping the
farm manage nutrients applied to cropland.
SMUD's Smart Grid Development
The Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD) is
implementing an advanced operating system for its
distribution system, the next foundation piece of the SMUD
smart grid. The improvements will automate portions of its
system with the goal of delivering energy savings through
increased efficiencies. SMUD began building its smart
grid by installing an automated metering infrastructure
network to accurately read more than 600,000 smart meters
across its service territory. The network and meter
installations commenced in late 2009 and full deployment is
nearly completed. Ultimately, the meters will feed data into
SMUD's outage management system (OMS) providing alert
notifications to system operators without the customer
needing to notify SMUD. The advanced operating system
component of SMUD's smart grid initiative includes adding
automatic sectionalizing and restoration capabilities to a
portion of the distribution system. In addition, the
advanced operating system will optimize capacitor bank
switching to enable voltage reduction on the distribution
circuit reducing demand. After completion of the project in
2013, the estimated benefits from the affected circuits are
an approximate 10.4 megawatt reduction of peak summer load
and 36,520 megawatt-hours per year of energy savings.
NATIONAL NEWS
Advanced Manufacturing Office Announces Support
for Pilot Institute for Manufacturing Innovation
A
Broad Agency Announcement for the first pilot Institute,
part of the proposed
National Network for Manufacturing Innovation (NNMI),
has just been released by the Defense Department (DOD). This
interagency collaboration, initiated by the President is led
at the Energy Department by the Advanced Manufacturing
Office (AMO) and includes DOD, the Commerce Department and
other agencies. The pilot, the first of up to 15 Institutes
proposed by the President, will serve as regional
communities of manufacturing excellence that can help make
U.S. manufacturers more competitive and encourage investment
in the United States. The pilot Institute will develop
a broad spectrum of additive manufacturing technologies for
a range of structural and functional materials with defense
and energy applications; demonstrate technologies at a
convincing scale; reduce the life-cycle energy cost of
products and processes; transition technologies to
manufacturing enterprises within the U.S. and ultimately
promote U.S. economic competitiveness. Stakeholders
interested in submitting a proposal may attend the
Proposer's Day planned for May 16, 2012 in Arlington,
Virginia and learn more about the pilot Institute concept
and associated technology needs. Attendance is not a
prerequisite for submitting a proposal; however, this event
will provide a valuable opportunity to ask questions. Visit
the
NNMI pilot Institute website for further details on the
Proposer's Day. For specific questions regarding the pilot
Institute contact:
NNMI2012@wpafb.af.mil.
DOE Announces Regional Winners of University Clean
Energy Business Competitions
Underscoring the Obama Administration’s commitments to
keep college affordable for American families and students
and support the next generation of energy leaders, the U.S.
Energy Department (DOE) recently announced the regional
winners of its National Clean Energy Business Plan
Competition. The initiative inspires university teams across
the country to create new businesses and commercialize
promising energy technologies developed at U.S. universities
and the National Laboratories. The competition aims to
promote entrepreneurship in clean energy technologies that
will boost American competitiveness, bring cutting-edge
clean energy solutions to the market, and strengthen our
economic prosperity. Each team of students identified a
promising clean energy technology from a university or
national lab and created a business plan around the
technology that detailed how they could help bring it to
market. This includes financing, product design, scaling up
production and marketing. The regional finalists –
Northwestern University, University of Utah, University of
Central Florida, MIT, Stanford University and Columbia
University – will go on to compete in the first national
competition in Washington, D.C. this June.
EPA Launches 2012 ENERGY STAR National Building
Competition
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is
currently kicking off its
2012 ENERGY STAR National Building Competition, Battle of
the Buildings. The competition offers commercial
building owners and managers a platform to achieve real
energy, water, and cost savings and be nationally recognized
for their efforts. During the contest, commercial
buildings from across the nation will compete in a
head-to-head battle to see who can reduce energy waste the
most. In addition, EPA is expanding opportunities and
offering new ways for organizations to get involved.
It will also be recognizing the overall winner and top
finishers by building category, as well as top water savers.
Any commercial building can compete and
applications are due by May 23, 2012. EPA will
also be holding a
webinar on how to apply for the competition on May 15,
2012. To be eligible, a building must be benchmarked
in EPA’s
ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager with complete data entered
for the calendar year 2011 (1/1/2011-12/31/2011).
EPA Announces Opportunity to participate in the
Development of a U.S. Heat Meter Standard
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Combined Heat
and Power Partnership (EPA CHP) is informing their Partners
of an opportunity to participate in the development of a
U.S. heat meter standard that could have important impacts
on the CHP industry. EPA's CHP team supports the
development of a U.S. heat meter standard as a means to both
credibly and accurately measure the environmental, energy
and financial benefits of combined heat and power. Such
standards will strengthen efforts to recognize the value of
thermal energy. ASTM's E44.25 subcommittee, which is
developing the standard, will be hosting its first
VIRTUAL meeting on May 22, 2012 from 1:00 pm to 3:30 pm EDT.
All interested stakeholders are encouraged to register and
attend this meeting. In order to receive online access
information for the virtual meeting, please
click here to PRE-REGISTER. Registration will be
required for this meeting. Your pre-registration will be
followed by an email confirmation as well as a calendar
invitation. ASTM will also host the first ASTM
E44.25 IN PERSON meeting on July 11-12, 2012, at the San
Francisco Marriott Marquis Hotel. The E44.25 meeting space
is being sponsored by SEMI and will be concurrent to the
SEMICON West 2012 and Intersolar North America conferences
that same week.
Residential Energy Codes Methodology Update
The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) published a Request
for Information (RFI) on Building Energy Codes Cost Analysis
(Docket No.
EERE-2011-BT-BC-0046) in the Federal Register on
September 13, 2011. (76 FR 56413.) The notice sought public
input on how DOE may improve the methodology for assessing
changes to residential building energy codes. As a result,
DOE updated the methodology, and has published a
response to comments received. The complete
residential cost analysis methodology is available on DOE's
energy codes
website. Applications are anticipated in the following
weeks, including assessments of the 2009 and 2012 editions
of the IECC, followed by ongoing concepts DOE is
investigating for potential submission to the 2015 IECC code
process.
2012 Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption
(CBECS) Stakeholder Meeting
The Energy Information Administration (EIA) will be
holding a 2012 Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption
(CBECS) stakeholder meeting on Tuesday, May 15, 1:00pm –
4:30pm EDT to discuss potential revisions to the CBECS.
The meeting will take place at the U.S. Green Building
Council (2101 L St. NW, Suite 500, Washington DC). A
webcast and conference call will be available to those who
cannot participate in person. If you are interested in
attending the meeting or the webcast/conference call, please
RVSP to Joelle Michaels (Joelle.Michaels@eia.gov)
by Thursday, May 10. Visit the
EIA
website for more information on CBECS.
EVENTS
ASERTTI Buildings Committee Webinar
Monday, May 21, 2012 – 1 PM ET
Please contact
Sarah Ruen Blanchard,
to register.
SunShot Grand Challenge Event
June
13–14, 2012 – Denver, CO
Biomass 2012: Confronting Challenges, Creating
Opportunities – Sustaining a Commitment to Bioenergy
July 10-11, 2012 – Washington, D.C.
Save the Date for the Energy Services Coalition
National Meeting
August 23-24, 2012 – Nashville,
Tennessee
Save the Date for the 2012 ASERTTI Fall Meeting
October 10-12 - Seattle, WA
For past news stories visit our News
Archive.
|
