This page contains downloads with useful Energy Efficiency and Energy Engineering information.
They’re all available for free, with the hope that they’ll contribute towards an advancement of Energy Engineering, and ultimately, increased energy savings.
E350 Weather Tool
Access to good weather data is an invaluable tool in our field of work. We use it to find relationships between atmospheric conditions, operating profiles, and the resultant effect on energy usage, which in turn helps us identify opportunities for efficiency and quantify energy savings.
Lucky for us, this data is recorded by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) weather stations and made available to the public. After downloading thousands of these datasets, we’ve noticed that records can often require a little love and attention before getting put to good use. As such, we’ve developed a tool to help automate these processes.
How Does It Work?
The E350 weather tool pulls in raw NOAA weather data records and makes the following adjustments as needed:
- Align data into consistent one-hour time intervals
- Populating missing data points
- Calculated Wet Bulb Temperature using Dry Bulb Temperature and Relative Humidity
- Calculated HDDs and CDDs using a range of base temperatures from 55 to 65
- Hourly Data Conversion to Daily Averages
Although we feel confident in our tool, we encourage an additional quality check for each individual dataset. To make this easier, we’ve included a “QC Summary” located at the top of each report output that details the percentage of estimated data points and a description of how they were calculated. We’ve also noticed that the reliability of NOAA data is highest at the largest airports. With this in mind, we recommend considering using data from the nearest major airport, avoiding small municipal airports when possible.
Energy 350 Hourly Weather Archives
TMY Tool
Energy Engineering Resources
Graph measuring enthalpy (in BTU/pound of dry air) against dry bulb temperatures and dewpoint temperatures. It determines the resultant sensible heat ratio and relative humidity.
Papers & Presentations
Putting the Whole in Holistic: Improving SEM Delivery through Applied Psychology & Systems Thinking
This paper was presented at the 2020 ACEEE Summer Study in Energy Efficiency in Buildings by Kjell van Zoen and Dave Hall.
SEM is often referred to as “a holistic approach” to energy efficiency in an organization. Kjell and Dave take a dive into what this means, and they offer insights and best practices to improve program participation and drive increased energy savings.
This paper outlines details on retrofitting constant volume systems to variable volume systems using Advanced RTU Controls. It explores the following:
- Where these retrofits are happening
- The economics of retrofitting
- Present obstacles to overcome
- Control methods, options and results
- Cost-effectively verifying savings
- Results from hundreds of system retrofits, including: trend data, pre- and post-metered data
- End-user feedback after system retrofit
Key takeaways for the reader will be to:
- Understand that there is now significant and cost-effective energy savings opportunity for packaged RTUs
- Share experiences in approaching a difficult market to engage
- Explore control options, retrofit methods and configurations
This paper documents Energy 350’s challenges, learnings, and technology solutions that we’ve discovered since Oregon’s legalization of recreational cannabis in 2015. The intent of this paper is to share knowledge and accelerate the learning process for states recently legalized or facing legalization. This paper will share breakthroughs in the following areas:
- How to remove heat caused by dehumidification from the growing environment, which is typically dominated by the need to cool.
- How to mitigate challenges in balancing indoor environment plant needs, which are CO2 enriched and clean, with traditional efficient HVAC design, which relies upon free or efficient cooling in cool weather without introducing impure air into the growing space and exhausting unacceptable amounts of CO2.
- How to engage a historically unorthodox population of growers with little access to capital and even less time to consider efficiency.
Building upon a successful direct-install campaign to better understand the energy savings potential of Tier 2 Power Strips, PG&E explored a retail delivery model in 2017. By offering Tier 2 products at a discount to over 1,000 select PG&E customers and following up with a 2-month post-install survey, we were able to answer critical questions needed to assess the cost-effectiveness and feasibility of a future utility program retail delivery model. This paper will explore the Tier 2 promotion and survey methodology and present findings from the post-install survey to help answer several important program specific questions, such as:
- What was the initial installation rate and persistence over time?
- What reasons were given for removing the device over the 2-month post-install period?
- How easy was the installation using the manufacturer provided instructions?
- How satisfied were customers overall with the power strip?
- Is there a relationship between customer demographics and persistence?
Powerpoint of Chris Smith’s presentation on Industrial Retrocommissioning – Stories from the Field
Paper relating to presentation. This paper aims to explore the following:
- Overview of RCx program structures
- Where programs should focus resources to obtain const-effective savings from retrocommissioning
- Success stories and several lessons learned from past projects and different program structures
This is the paper accompaniment to the presentation Engaging Large Industrial Customers.
This paper explores the following:
- Using gateway projects to open doors. What are good gateway projects?
- Leveraging motivations to explore and implement energy conservation measures. Beyond the energy economics. What gets plants to commit?
- Tools to deploy while on your first site visit in a plant that is overwhelming.
- How to develop rapport with an industrial. What not to do.
- Using Retrocommissioning approaches to earn trust with data driven presentations and results.
Powerpoint of Nick O’Neil’s presentation on metering:
More Value to Metering Than Ever Before
This presentation covers the following topics:
- Why do programs meter in the first place?
- What is involved with metering and what are common barriers?
- Demonstrating value with examples from the field
- What is the upfront and long-term value to metering?
Value from 3 perspectives: – End-user – Utility efficiency program – Regional planner - What to do with all this data?
Paper accompaniment to presentation, More Value to Metering Than Every Before.
By highlighting the many benefits to metering this paper aims to explore the following:
- Perceived value of metering in utility programs from customer and utility perspectives
- Reasons why updated load and savings shapes have been ignored for so long
- Examples from the field of updated shapes and their impacts