Environmental Security Technology

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In the Solar Durability and Lifetime Extension (SDLE) Research Center at Case Western Reserve University, we’re pleased to offer an Environmental Security Technology Certification Program (ESTCP). Learn details about the program below. 

Project Overview

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) manages more than 300,000 buildings throughout the United States for which decisions must be made regarding equipment replacements or upgrades and operational changes. This ESTCP project will demonstrate an easy-to-implement solution that enables energy managers to make decisions and prioritize capital investments to improve building energy performance. We will demonstrate and validate a virtual energy audit software tool called EDIFES (Energy Diagnostics Investigator for Efficiency Savings) on DoD facilities without setting foot in the buildings. EDIFES does not require complex or expensive computational simulation, physical audits, distributed sub-metering, building automation systems, or lengthy questionnaires. 

Instead, we only collect five pieces of information from the building manager or the corresponding utility: square footage, number of floors, location (e.g., zip code), end-use (e.g., office space), and one year of whole building 15-minute interval electricity data. Our ESTCP project objective is to demonstrate the software tool on a population of 500+ DoD buildings. Via an interactive dashboard, EDIFES will output a prioritized list of buildings with the highest energy waste, identifying and quantifying specific opportunities related to HVAC, building envelope, lighting, plug load, refrigeration, and more. We will fully validate these findings and resulting energy savings on 30-40 buildings using sensoring, metering, and feedback from the building energy manager. Ultimately, we expect that the ESTCP program will enable us to attract new partnerships with DoD organizations and other end-users, accelerating the path to commercialization.

Members and Collaborators

  • Roger H. French (Principal Investigator and Kyocera Professor, CWRU and CTO, Edifice Analytics)
  • Alexis R. Abramson (Dean of Engineering, Dartmouth College and COO, Edifice Analytics)
  • Michael E. Goldberg (Associate Professor, CWRU and Board Chair, Edifice Analytics)
  • Dave Gordon (CEO, Edifice Analytics)
  • Alexander West (Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, CWRU)
  • Stephen Timothy (Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, CWRU)

Acknowledgments

This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency - Energy (ARPA-E) Agreement Number DE-AR0001250.