United States.
The buildings could use much less energy with the help of a new project announced by the Department of Energy (DOE) at its Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL). The lab awarded $300,000 for the project, which is part of DOE's Small Business Vouchers pilot.
Small and medium-sized commercial buildings could reduce their energy bills with the help of lab-developed algorithms that improve cooling and heating and lighting systems by identifying systems that aren't performing as expected — such as thermostats that don't change temperatures at allotted times — and correcting them. But while these algorithms have worked well in experiments, they need further refinement to be ready for use in the real world.
NNP engineer Michael Brambley and his team will help Lake Oswego, NorthWrite's Oregon headquarters, make these algorithms ready for commercial use. PNNL will test and validate the algorithm's performance and help NorthWrite adapt them for the company's cloud-based software, among other tasks. The algorithms involved were developed by PNNL and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
