IES Blog

The 8^th International Radiance Conference took place on the campus of Harvard University, in Cambridge Massachusetts, USA from October 21^st through the 23^rd, 2009. The event was hosted by Christoph Reinhart and Kera Lagios of Harvard’s Graduate School of Design. Two staff members from IES Boston attended the event, Michelle Farrell and Angela Chan. In total about 80 professionals and students attended.

Radiance was originally developed with the majority of support coming from the U.S. Department of Energy, with supplementary support from the Swiss Federal Government. One of the lead developers, Greg Ward of Anyhere Software, also attended. There was discussion around the improvements that will be available in Radiance 4.0, including a “new parallel computation facility in rvu (formerly rview), and tools for annual daylight simulations with complex fenestration systems”.

While Radiance has been around for many years, it was primarily used by experts familiar with its interface and coding. Some of the presentations focused on how the tool is being integrated with other modelling, and even parametric, software tools. Christoph Reinhart, Kera Lagios, and Jeff Niemasz of the Harvard Graduate School of Design developed a toolbar for Rhino that links it with Radiance and Daysim. Through the use of Grasshopper, key parameters of the design could be changed, and the Radiance/Daysim results respond accordingly, allowing for “the creation of animated building performance simulation.”

Other presentations, such as one by David Smith of Buro Happold, focused on the presentation of Radiance results. After giving a basic introduction to coding, Smith showed how he used Flash in combination with Radiance output to create deliverables such as “simple animations, mapping data to models, and interactive design aids”. The deliverables that he presented show the power of what reports can now contain, making the printed report or image collection seem almost archaic. A truly inspiring presentation that shows what is possible when it comes to reports when you add a little creativity.

A version of Radiance, RadianceIES, is contained within the IES Virtual Environment suite. By using Radiance as part of the IES Virtual Environment, One can use RadianceIES with LightPro or FlucsPro, also both modules in the Virtual Environment, to visualize and analyze electrical lighting schemes using VE’s extensive library of luminaires, or by importing your own photometric files. Furthermore, one can link Radiance to ApacheSIM to account for daylighting dimming strategies when running an annual energy simulation. It is this connection between the modules in the Virtual Environment that makes the IES’ software suite so powerful.

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‘Sustaining our Future by Rebuilding Our Past’ – The title of the presentation given by ASHRAE President Gordon Holness, and the highlight of the recent annual ASHRAE Presidential event in the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Westminster, London. This was a joint meeting with CIBSE, ASHRAE Group and the IMechE CBSD.

The current ASHRAE President firmly believes that energy efficiency in existing buildings is the key to a truly sustainable future… and with existing buildings being responsible for 40% of primary energy consumption in the US, you can see why. 

One of the most fascinating things about this presentation was the ability of Gordon Holness to produce detailed facts & figures at will. He has clearly been preaching the role of the existing buildings and their impact on our environment for quite some time now… Kudos!

Personally I believe to achieve an energy efficient existing building; we must first understand its complexity. I also believe that along the critical path to achieving an energy efficient existing building, we must first encounter its ‘virtual building’. Once calibrated, the virtual building with BIM will be the key to the design, redesign or retrofit. The existing building landscape as I see it is as below.

Bottom line: In this economic climate, achieving an energy efficient existing building can make all the difference to maintaining commercial survival or increased financial prosperity.

By the way, it is said that 75 – 80% of all buildings that will exist in 2030, exist today! I wonder how much of an issue carbon tax will be in 2030!

Liam

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Tags:BIM, Building, climate, Engineers, Environment, Sustainability

As a regular visitor to the west coast of Ireland on the pursuit of catching some of the finest surf on the planet I have experienced firsthand the potential for wave generated energy in Ireland. Just so as not to confuse any of our US west coast bloggers surfing in Ireland isn’t the glamour’s Kelly Slater version you would be more accustomed too, I’m talking 5mm wetsuits, gloves & even face masks!…

Due to Ireland’s geographical location, on the downwind side of the Atlantic Ocean in the region of prevailing south-westerly winds, Ireland’s coastline is exposed to one of the most vigorous wave climates in the world. This climate gives the Irish west coast, from Malin Head to Cape Clear, among the highest coastal wave power levels in the world.

Over the last 2 years many companies/research bodies have tested wave energy technology on the SEI (Sustainable Energy Ireland) wave energy test site off the coast of Co. Galway. testing has lead to the conclusion that wave energy generation is commercially feasible, test results have shown that the Irish governments wave energy generation target of 500mW by the year 2020 is achievable. Test results show that when a single full-scale turbine is connected to the national grid it would generate sufficient power to provide electricity for over 1,200 houses per year. Apart from the obvious green benefits associated with wave generated energy the harnessing of wave energy will create a considerable amount employment in those parts of Ireland scourged by unemployment.

On a final note wave/tidal energy technology is not a new idea in Ireland as I have recently discovered, it can be traced back as far as 601A.D where tidal energy was used in a simple mechanical system to grind wheat for making bread, so I guess you could say we haven’t really come that far  in the last 1400 years!

Keep the slabs coming!

Kieran

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Tags:climate

My parents used to always warn me that it was wasteful and potentially life threatening for creatures of the ocean to leave the water running while brushing my teeth.  When I was a child I remember this to be a huge deal and was conscientious to ensure that no extra drop was wasted.  A few years later, I realized that this was potentially a stretch of imagination and a fairy tale my mother and father created.  Once Global Warming became a household concept, I found myself to start believing the severity of the situation and actual lack of available fresh water.

Even though the globe is mainly covered in water, humans naturally require fresh water to survive.  With the world’s population increasing rapidly and the availability of fresh water decreasing just as fast, it is important to think of strategies to increase our supply on both small scales and large.  I picked out some of my favorites techniques below:

Learn how to fix a leaky toilet – There is something to be said for someone that is able to fix household plumbing issues and by staying on top of this, you can save a great deal of water from being wasted.

Wait till you have a full load - We all have our favourite jeans and are disappointed when they are in the wash, but it’s important to hold off until you have a full load to conserve water.

Grey Water – The home of the New England Patriots and New England Revolution uses grey water supplied by the stadiums own wastewater treatment system.  This system recycles over 10 million gallons of portable water a year. 

And of course make sure the water is off while you are brushing you teeth!

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Tags:recycle, recycling, Sustainability

It was on a recent trip to Sweden that I met a very colourful gentleman called the Swedish Chef. On discussing how to design a true sustainable building he replied “Don’t worry if you have to design a sustainable building, just use the VE!”

Sweden as a country has a great reputation in sustainability and energy efficiency and has recently been selected as the European Green Capital for 2010.

During my trip there I spent a number of days in Stockholm and learnt that it was the city council’s holistic vision that has lead the way for Stockholm becoming one of Europe’s most sustainable cities. It combines both growth and sustainable development. The city council has an ambitious target of becoming fossil fuel free by 2050 and many design teams are using BREEAM Europe to ensure buildings are playing there part in achieving the 2050 goal.

Overall Stockholm can be depicted as a city with very strong green programmes and effective measures across the board. Innovative ideas such as vegetated roofs have been put into practice. The city has an excellent structure of green and blue areas and, in fact 95% of the population lives only 300m away from green areas, thus catering for better well being, recreation, swimming, boating, water purification, noise reduction, enhancement of biodiversity and ecology.

The local transport system has taken several positive steps towards sustainability over the last ten years. A very broad and extensive range of measures have been adopted, including a successful and pioneering congestion charging system with good documented results in terms of reduced car use, and an increase in public transport share, included cycling. More than 75% of fuel stations in Stockholm now offer ethanol or biogas and all petrol solid in the region contains 5% ethanol.

As far as CO2 emissions are concerned, there has been a 25% reduction per capita in Stockholm emissions since 1990 which I believe can act as a bench mark for the rest of Europe.

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Tags:BREEAM, Building, cycling, free, reduce, Sustainability, Sweden

Responses to consultations on the proposed changes in Part L 2010 have been talking up quite a bit of my time recently.  Obviously, an area of particular interest to us is the calculations tools. 

The Building Research Establishment (BRE) developed SAP and SBEM drafts to support the Part L 2010 consultation package, both of which we’ve been looking at in-depth.  However, in this blog I’m just going to look at the proposed changes to SAP.

For SAP 2009, the proposals centre around the adoption of a monthly calculation method instead of the current annual calculation, with the addition of factors to address thermal mass and cooling.  This has a number of ramifications for various parts of the calculation.  The justification for this is the need to consider the energy balance at different times through the year with more rigour, for instance within very-low energy dwellings.

While there is certainly a need to ensure compliance methodologies don’t penalise the design techniques required to achieve very low-energy dwellings, could it be that that changing the current SAP methodology is an unnecessary route – one that is both expensive and potentially a disruptive burden on the industry?

The current SAP approach, based on a worksheet, is well understood by its users and is a simple, but reasonably transparent assessment suitable for the majority of conventional dwellings.  When you consider that there are other monthly calculation tools already developed and in-use in the non-domestic arena, why would the government invest taxpayers money in the research, development and implementation of another methodology especially when public spending is under severe constraints?

SBEM and DSM could cheaply and easily be extended to the domestic sector at virtually no cost, as could the existing training and accreditation routes.  In fact, many designers of low energy dwellings have already tried and tested dynamic thermal simulation in their day-to-day design.  SBEM is a monthly calculation (as is being proposed for SAP 2009), whereas DSM is a 8760 hourly annual calculation.  SBEM and DSM also provide a way to include treatment of thermal mass and cooling.

By offering a choice of calculation engine at the domestic level; SAP (simple heating only dwellings), SBEM (most dwellings) or DSM (all dwellings), all low energy technologies could be studied in the right level of detail by those with the right level of skills and without needless upheaval and cost.

The current SAP calculation could be left essentially as it is – negating the need to develop yet another publically funded energy calculation tool, with the associated significant upheaval and burden on the industry of re-training and accreditation.

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Tags:Building Research Establishment, Part L 2010, SAP 2009, SAP Calculation

As a company, IES is very proud of the fact that it can play a vital role in helping its clients to design buildings that are sustainable, energy-efficient and green. Indeed, it is the cornerstone of what the company aims to achieve, both through its product line and its support for carbon-reduction initiatives such as the 2030 Challenge. However, I often feel that as an individual it can be a little more difficult to see what role we can all play in helping to shape the future of the planet, as it seems like such a vast challenge. We often hear on the news about various government pledges to reduce carbon emissions, but it can easily feel like it is someone else’s problem - the policies introduced by our leaders will somehow be enough to solve the problem of climate change, and that there’s nothing we can really do to help.

I have to put my hand up here and admit that I am as guilty as anyone on this front. We all know about recycling and trying to use public transport more, but even though we know we could (and should) do more, it’s all too easy to simply think that it’s too big a problem and that our own individual actions won’t actually make any difference. But during my time at IES, I’ve come to realise more and more that we all have to take responsibility for what will happen to our climate in future - government policies and initiatives alone will not be sufficient to turn the tide on climate change, so we all need to accept that we have our own part to play.

That’s one of the reasons why I was very interested to hear about the 10:10 challenge, an initiative that has been set up here in the UK by the Guardian newspaper in conjunction with Franny Anderson, director of the climate change documentary, The Age of Stupid. The campaign is hoping to recruit thousands of everyday people to sign-up to a pledge to reduce their own individual carbon footprint by 10% over 2010, by simply making small, simple and achievable changes to the way we live our everyday lives. The campaign site gives lots of information to prove that we all need to take the time to make a difference and explains why the 2010 target is important. We’re all aware of the 2030 and 2050 carbon reduction targets, but the campaign explains that there is a growing belief in the scientific community that our carbon production levels need to peak and start to reduce within the next few years if we’re to have any real hope of our stopping the problem of climate change.

The campaign has already had a lot of positive press and publicity buzz, including various celebrity sign-ups and endorsement from politicians here in the UK. The plan is to continually grow the campaign over the course of the next year, including allowing people to share their own experiences and tips on reducing their carbon footprint. It is this aspect that I like the most - 10:10 is set up to show us that not only do we all need to take responsibility for reducing climate change, but that we can all do it in ways that are both achievable and meaningful. It’s not just about businesses or governments taking action - as responsible citizens, we all have to make changes for the sake of future generations. This can include obvious changes to our lifestyle such as flying less and not keeping electronic devices on standby, but the site also gives lots of other useful ideas for energy saving, along with an approximation of the amount of carbon each action could reduce the footprint by.

Whilst these changes for each of us alone will not be some magical “silver bullet” that means climate change is no longer an issue, I’m hopeful that the campaign will allow individuals to see that they can collectively help to make a difference and that it’s not all someone else’s problem. We can all be very good at talking up our responses to climate change, but ultimately our actions will speak louder.

Find out more about the 10:10 challenge by visiting http://www.1010uk.org and http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/10-10.

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Tags:Building, Environment, recycle, recycling, reduce, Sustainability

Who knows where we are in this recession, but some interesting changes are being made in response to it.  The USGBC recently announced that the minimum occupancy rate for buildings pursuing LEED-EBOM has been lowered from 75% to 50%.  This is in light of the “current market realities that have disqualified an unprecedented number of properties from pursuing LEED certification.”  This means that if a building is only half full, it can still pursue certification under LEED for Existing Buildings: Operation and Maintenance (aka EBOM – a much funnier way to refer to the standard – say it out loud, it’s one of those funny words like gazebo). 

This is a fairly big move as the way a building operates at full occupancy compared with half occupancy is very different and is reflected in how several of the credits will be achieved.  For instance a majority of the energy credits are based on the buildings performance in the Energy Star Portfolio Manager program from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).  The Energy Star rating is based on your buildings energy performance compared with other similar types of buildings.  But this is based on buildings that are usually fully occupied.  There is a potential of over-inflating the energy performance of the partially occupied building.  Interestingly enough, this is “expected to be a permanent change”. 

The shift in vacancy rates is good news for one of our clients who was considering LEED-EBOM for some of their recent developments. They are now able to qualify.  Recently, we’ve seen an increased amount of request for assistance in the Existing Building market, using both LEED and/or energy savings as the major goals.  I’ll save for another blog posting the approaches we have for helping clients in the existing building market realize energy savings and reaching sustainability goals.  Instead, I’ll share with you the list of common LEED-EBOM questions (and our abridged answers) we see from clients investigating the feasibility of LEED for their building.

Q1.  What is the length of performance period for energy consumption (EAp2, EAc1) for both versions of LEED-EBOM:�
• LEED-EBOM 2009   [A: 1 year]
• LEED-EBOM 2008 [A: 1 year]

Q2.  What is the maximum percentage of renovation that is allowed to occur during the performance period for both versions of LEED-EBOM:
• LEED-EBOM 2009 [A: 50% by floor area]
• LEED-EBOM 2008 [A: 50% by floor area]

Q3.  Can retail on the first floor of the office building be excluded from the LEED-EBOM process since they are on separate energy systems?
• [A: No for both versions of LEED-EBOM]

Q4.  How much of the building floor area needs to be considered during the LEED-EBOM certification process?
• LEED-EBOM 2009   [A: 90% based on total gross floor area]
• LEED-EBOM 2008 [A: 90% based on total gross floor area]
 To view the news release issued by the USGC, visit www.usgbc.org/News/USGBCInTheNewsDetails.aspx?ID=4190
 The image is “borrowed” from http://nopolymon.blogspot.com/

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Tags:Building, LEED, Sustainability, The Energy Star rating, USGBC

Congratulations to our clients, highlighted in yellow, that were shortlisted for the 2009 Building and UKGBC Sustainability Awards - keep up the good work and good luck at the awards ceremony on 24th November.

You can view all the shortlisted entries by visiting the Building Magazine article

Sustainable Designer of the Year (Architect or Engineer)

Aedas Architects Bennetts Associates Cundall Feilden Clegg Bradley Studios Jestico + Whiles pha Consult PRP Ramboll

Sustainable Consultant of the Year

• AECOM
• Atelier Ten
• Atkins / Faithful+Gould
• BDP
• Davis Langdon
• Hilson Moran
• Jones Lang LaSalle
• WSP

Sustainable Contractor of the Year (Main or Specialist)

• Breyer Group
• Byrne Bros Ltd
• NG Bailey
• United House, Islington
• Wates Group
• Willmott Dixon

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Tags:Architects, Awards, Building, Engineers, Green Building, Green Design, Sustainability, UK GBC