Subscribe free to our newsletters via your
. 24/7 Space News .




CHIP TECH
Berkeley Lab Breaks Ground on Flexible Design Building to Test Low-energy Systems and Components
by Allan Chen Berkeley News
Berkeley CA (SPX) Dec 12, 2012


Rendering of the Facility for Low Energy eXperiments in Buildings.

Today marks the start of a new era for research on energy-efficient buildings at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). Lab leadership and distinguished guests from the U.S. Department of Energy, the state of California, utilities and the building industry broke ground on the start of construction for the Facility for Low-Energy eXperiments on Buildings (FLEXLAB).

"Our new FLEXLAB facility will open the doors to many new ideas on how we can reduce energy consumed by buildings. Today, buildings are responsible for about 40 percent of our nation's greenhouse gas emissions," says Ashok Gadgil, director of Berkeley Lab's Environmental Energy Technologies Division (EETD). "Finding new, advanced, building technologies should help us save up to 80 percent on new construction."

"FLEXLAB will be the most advanced heavily-instrumented facility for developing and validating the performance of new energy-efficient building controls and technologies in the U.S.," says Cindy Regnier, Technical Manager of the FLEXLAB facility.

"By allowing scientists, the building industry, and the architecture and engineering community a chance to change out and combine building components to develop them as integrated systems, FLEXLAB will allow its users to develop low-energy-use building designs whose total energy savings will be greater than the additive savings of the individual components."

Joining Berkeley Lab Deputy Director Horst Simon for the groundbreaking were U.S. Department of Energy Deputy Assistant Secretary for Renewable Energy, Steven Chalk, and California Energy Commission Chairman Robert Weisenmiller, among others.

Construction teams will shortly begin building the four testbeds that collectively form the new exterior portion of FLEXLAB located outside an existing building at Berkeley Lab. (Two testbeds within an adjacent existing building were completed in November and are now in the start-up phase of their operation.)

When FLEXLAB is completed late in 2013, researchers in EETD, and its public and private sector research partners, will be able to swap out building components and systems in the modules, and measure, analyze and improve their performance under real world conditions.

The facility will accelerate the development and deployment of controls and technologies for both retrofit and new construction applications and allow energy use of innovative solutions to be benchmarked against standard building practice.

The six interior and exterior testbeds together will total more than 9,000 square feet of floorspace, and are funded with $15.9 million from the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act through the U.S. Department of Energy.

In the new exterior facility, each module will be reconfigurable-depending on the research plan, users will be able to replace windows, walls, access floor, lighting, HVAC systems and other elements with prototypes for testing. The interior spaces will be reconfigurable as well, and can be divided into zones and outfitted as offices.

The test spaces will normally be unoccupied, but can be utilized by people to test thermal and visual comfort and assess the interface with control systems.

One testbed can be rotated to any orientation with respect to the sun. It can reset its position every 60 seconds to align with solar orientation to measure how sun position impacts energy use and interior conditions.

Another double-height testbed is designed to test technologies utilized in two-story high structures, with applications that include big box retail environments. These modules will also test technologies such as skylights and roof glazings.

FLEXLAB will include one of the most extensive data acquisition and control capabilities ever used in a building test facility, allowing industry partners to remotely operate the facility and analyze performance data. Outdoor weather and solar conditions, occupancy sensors, airflow and room pressure measurements, lighting and glare, and thermal conditions are among the factors that the facility's instrumentation will be able to monitor.

Among the visitors participating in today's groundbreaking were representatives from Philips Lighting and Daikin as early research partners for FLEXLAB, as well as PG and E and San Jose Prospect, an early deployment partner.

After the groundbreaking ceremony, an industry roundtable was held focusing on FLEXLAB's capabilities, industry research needs, and the possibilities for collaborative research in the new facility.

.


Related Links
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Computer Chip Architecture, Technology and Manufacture
Nano Technology News From SpaceMart.com






Comment on this article via your Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, Hotmail login.

Share this article via these popular social media networks
del.icio.usdel.icio.us DiggDigg RedditReddit GoogleGoogle








CHIP TECH
Tiny compound semiconductor transistor could challenge silicon's dominance
Cambridge MA (SPX) Dec 12, 2012
Silicon's crown is under threat: The semiconductor's days as the king of microchips for computers and smart devices could be numbered, thanks to the development of the smallest transistor ever to be built from a rival material, indium gallium arsenide. The compound transistor, built by a team in MIT's Microsystems Technology Laboratories, performs well despite being just 22 nanometers (billionth ... read more


CHIP TECH
Apollo's Lunar Dust Data Being Restored

To the moon and back for less than 2 billion dollars

NASA's GRAIL Creates Most Accurate Moon Gravity Map

Chinese astronauts may grow veg on Moon

CHIP TECH
Charitum Montes: a cratered winter wonderland

Opportunity Continues Rock Studies

Orbiter Spies Where Rover's Cruise Stage Hit Mars

NASA to send new rover to Mars in 2020

CHIP TECH
What happens to plant growth when you remove gravity?

Scientists say NASA's budget inadequate for its goals

What trends will take upper hand in space exploration?

To reach final frontier, NASA can't go it alone: analysts

CHIP TECH
Mr Xi in Space

China plans manned space launch in 2013: state media

China to launch manned spacecraft

Tiangong 1 Parked And Waiting As Shenzhou 10 Mission Prep Continues

CHIP TECH
Medical Ops, Fan Checks for Space Crew; New Trio Checks Soyuz

Khrunichev Completes Nauka Space Station Module

New Crew of ISS to Perform Two Spacewalks

Space Station to reposition for science

CHIP TECH
ULA Launch Monopoly to End

SPACEX Awarded Two EELV Class Missions From The USAF

Russia Set to Launch Telecoms Satellite for Gazprom

Sea Launch Delivers the EUTELSAT 70B Spacecraft into Orbit

CHIP TECH
Astronomers discover and 'weigh' infant solar system

Search for Life Suggests Solar Systems More Habitable than Ours

Do missing Jupiters mean massive comet belts?

Brown Dwarfs May Grow Rocky Planets

CHIP TECH
Russia saves satellite after launch glitch

Mobile Internet forcing computers to evolve

Malaysia orders Australian miner to ship out waste

$99 Google laptops for schools sold out




The content herein, unless otherwise known to be public domain, are Copyright 1995-2014 - Space Media Network. AFP, UPI and IANS news wire stories are copyright Agence France-Presse, United Press International and Indo-Asia News Service. ESA Portal Reports are copyright European Space Agency. All NASA sourced material is public domain. Additional copyrights may apply in whole or part to other bona fide parties. Advertising does not imply endorsement,agreement or approval of any opinions, statements or information provided by Space Media Network on any Web page published or hosted by Space Media Network. Privacy Statement