EETD Communications

One of the quickest, most inexpensive paths to increasing gas mileage and reducing vehicle carbon dioxide emissions is to reduce vehicle weight, rather than investing in new, expensive vehicle technologies. Concerns that reducing vehicle weight will result in increased fatalities from vehicle accidents have hindered past efforts to substantially increase fuel economy standards, but recent research results, including those of Tom Wenzel, a research scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division (EETD), are challenging this assumption. If analyses can show that vehicle manufacturers can lower vehicle weight safely, then corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards can be strengthened without undue cost to consumers.

Wenzel’s role in examining the relationship between vehicle weight and traffic fatalities began years ago, when the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) published its first studies on the subject in 1997 and 2003. While reviewing the results of those studies, he noticed some shortcomings.

“The reports’ conclusions weren’t necessarily based on their analytical results,” he recalls.

So, supported by several foundations, he reviewed and commented on the earlier studies. Then, when the most recent rulemaking to raise CAFE standards began, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) funded him to analyze the most recent NHTSA analysis, and also to look at independent data on the relationship between reductions in vehicle weight and casualty risk (which addresses both fatalities and serious incapacitating injuries) per vehicle crash.

Read the rest here.

Ashok Gadgil, the Director of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), has won the Lifetime Achievement award of the Zayed Future Energy Prize. The award was announced in Abu Dhabi at the Zayed award ceremony today.

The $3.5 million Zayed Future Energy Prize, managed by Masdar in Abu Dhabi, recognizes and rewards innovation, leadership, and long-term vision in renewable energy and sustainability. The award is named in honor of Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, the late ruler of Abu Dhabi and the founding father of the United Arab Emirates, who made environmental protection a part of his legacy. The 2012 Zayed Future Energy Prize was presented to three winners and two runners up at the awards ceremony held in Emirates Palace.

The Zayed Prize organization said that “All three finalists excelled in demonstrating clear impact through their work in disseminating solutions to further knowledge, creating awareness, as well as developing policies and technologies in renewable energy and sustainability.”

Other award winners included the UK’s Carbon Disclosure Project in the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) & Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) category. India’s Orb Energy and Environmental Defense Fund of the United States were first and second runners-up respectively in the same category. French company Schneider Electric received a Recognition Award in the Large Corporations category. Gadgil’s share of the award was $500,000.

Ashok Gadgil released the following statement on winning the Zayed Future Energy Prize’s Lifetime Achievement award:

“Being selected the winner for the Zayed prize is a great honor and tremendous validation of my lifelong passion and efforts for energy innovation and sustainability.

“Looking at the list of past prize winners and runners up—some of whose work I know well—I am impressed with the energy and ingenuity of this group, and I hope that we can work together, and inspire many others, to advance the aim of the Zayed Future Energy Prize—energy sustainability for the planet.

“Vigorous efforts and political leadership are needed to make the concept of sustainability an integral part of policy decisions. Energy sustainability is a critical and integral part of the sustainability for the planetary ecosystem and of the human economic system, and we need to work quickly to forestall irreversible damage to the Earth’s ecosystem and to human well-being.

“Winning the Zayed Energy Prize deepens my commitment to energy innovation for sustainability. Together with my colleagues and co-workers, I will continue to advance the research, design, testing, and scale-up of fuel-efficient low-emission stoves for about three billion people (mostly women) that use biomass for cooking.  I will also continue to efforts to innovate, field test, demonstrate, and help scale-up the technology for arsenic remediation of drinking water for close to 100 million people in Bangladesh, West Bengal, and tens of millions of others elsewhere poisoned with arsenic in their drinking water.”

In addition to being Director of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Gadgil is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley. He has substantial experience in technical, economic, and policy research on energy efficiency and its implementation—particularly in developing countries. For example, the utility-sponsored compact fluorescent lamp leasing programs that he pioneered are being successfully implemented by utilities in several east-European and developing countries. He has several patents and inventions to his credit, among them the “UV Waterworks,” a technology to inexpensively disinfect drinking water in the developing countries, for which he received the Discover Award in 1996 for the most significant environmental invention of the year, as well as the Popular Science award for “Best of What is New–1996.” In recent years, he has worked on ways to inexpensively remove arsenic from Bangladesh drinking water, and on fuel-efficient stoves for Darfur.

Dr. Gadgil has received several other awards and honors for his work, including the Pew Fellowship in Conservation and the Environment in 1991 for his work on accelerating energy efficiency in developing countries, the World Technology Award for Energy in 2002, the Tech Laureate Award in 2004, the Heinz Award in 2009, the European Inventor Award in 2011.

More about Ashok Gadgil.

Read the Zayed Future Energy Prize Announcement here.

Zayed Future Energy Prize website: http://www.zayedfutureenergyprize.com/

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and U.S. Department of Energy have released The Energy Information Handbook: Applications for Energy-Efficient Buildings Operations. This free book guides commercial building owners and operators who have no experience with energy information systems in understanding how to analyze the energy use of buildings, and use their analysis to lower energy costs by operating buildings more efficiently. Software developers and energy service providers in the commercial building industry, as well as more experienced owners and managers who wish to improve how they visualize, analyze, and manage their build­ing’s energy use, will also find the book useful.

From the Introduction:

“There are a wealth of methods and tools to monitor and measure building energy use (both over the long haul and in real time) and to identify where best to focus your energy-efficiency efforts. But with so many options, where do you start? This handbook will give you the information you need to plan an energy-management strategy that works for your building, making it more energy efficient.”

The handbook was written by Jessica Granderson, Mary Ann Piette, Ben Rosenblum, and Lily Hu of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Dan Harris of New Buildings Institute.

Download a PDF http://eis.lbl.gov/downloads/energy-information-handbook.pdf

Learn more at the Energy Information Systems website.

In addition to the handbook, you can also download the outcomes of other work related to building energy management including: a categorization framework and market characterization of building energy information systems (EIS), and a series of case studies with large facility owners to explore users’ experiences with EIS.

Related work, also posted at eis.lbl.gov, has developed a categorization framework and market characterization of building energy information (EIS) systems and explored users’ experience with EIS in a series of case studies with large facility owners.

For more information:

http://eis.lbl.gov

Ed Vine, a scientist in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division is the editor of a special issue of the journal Energy Efficiency focusing solely on the evaluation of energy efficiency (2012: volume 5 number 1). The papers published in the issue are a subset of those delivered at the International Energy Program Evaluation Conference held in Europe in 2010.

The issue’s introduction, by Vine and S. Thomas of the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment, and Energy notes that “Europe is at a critical juncture in developing a professional evaluation community. As the European Commission designs and implements directives and the Member States, regions, local authorities, and energy companies all create their own policies and programs, it is important that the evaluation community in Europe participate in the design and implementation of energy efficiency programs and policies, as well as in their evaluation. Policymakers need to know what works and what does not work.”

The full set of papers from the conference are available here.

A study released today by researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) identifies steps that energy efficiency program managers can take to deliver significant savings on home energy bills to middle-income households.

“Middle-income households have been hit hard by the recent recession, and sagging home prices have undermined the traditional reliance of middle-income households on home equity for financing home improvements,” says Berkeley Lab’s Mark Zimring, a researcher in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division (EETD) and co-author on the report.  “It is really difficult to motivate them to invest in improving the efficiency of their homes, and to overcome the up-front cost barrier once they’re motivated.”

Middle-income households–those making about $32,500 to $72,500 per year–account for one-third of total U.S. residential energy use and figure prominently in meeting energy savings targets that now exist in most states, as well as reducing air emissions and managing demands on the grid.

Read the rest:

http://newscenter.lbl.gov/news-releases/2011/12/20/saving-on-energy-bills-meeting-families-in-the-middle/

More information:

http://middleincome.lbl.gov/

Download the study:

http://eetd.lbl.gov/EAP/EMP/reports/lbnl-5244e.pdf

Researchers estimate that those of us in developed countries spend 90 percent of our time indoors, which means that most of the time we are breathing air polluted by emissions from indoor sources. Providing more outdoor air ventilation can improve indoor air quality; however, energy is needed to heat, cool, humidify or dehumidify, and sometimes filter the ventilation air brought indoors from outdoors. Studies have shown that about 10 percent of the energy consumed in the U.S. commercial buildings is used to thermally condition ventilation air. To improve a building’s energy efficiency, we would like to reduce ventilation rates while maintaining good air quality—or better yet, to do so while improving indoor air quality.

Through their work at the Indoor Environment Department of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division (EETD), William Fisk, Hugo Destaillats, and Meera Sidheswaran are devising solutions to this challenge. Recently, they have been evaluating two ways to reduce indoor air pollutants without increasing ventilation rates: by developing a synthetic catalyst to reduce indoor formaldehyde concentrations, and by evaluating the effectiveness of activated carbon fiber filters in reducing other volatile organic compound (VOC) concentrations.

Formaldehyde is a common indoor pollutant that the World Health Organization and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services lists as a human carcinogen. Formaldehyde concentrations in indoor air are routinely above the maximum recommended indoor level, so efforts to improve indoor air quality often target formaldehyde.

“Mean formaldehyde concentrations in a typical U.S. building are about 17 parts per billion,” says Destaillats, “although 20 to 50 parts per billion are fairly common. ” The California Environmental Protection Agency guideline for the maximum recommended long-term-average formaldehyde concentration is 9 parts per billion.

To reduce these formaldehyde concentrations, Fisk, Destaillats, and Sidheswaran developed a catalyst that could be applied to the filters routinely used to remove particles from airstreams. They formed the catalyst samples by co-precipitation of manganese-containing precursors, and cured them at different temperatures to compare their effectiveness. The synthesis resulted in a black powder containing agglomerates of particles smaller than 50 nanometers (nm) in diameter, giving the formaldehyde plenty of surface area with which to react. The research team used porosimetry and surface area analysis; X-ray diffractometry; SEM imaging analysis; and ICP-MS analysis to characterize the catalyst.
Read the rest: http://eetd.lbl.gov/news-archives/news-voc-air.html

For more information contact Allan Chen, a_chen@lbl.gov.

Technical contact: William Fisk, WJFisk@lbl.gov

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory is seeking participants for a study of air quality in California homes. The study is being conducted by scientists in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division of Berkeley Lab. This project is funded by the California Energy Commission and is focused on homes with natural gas appliances. Individuals who are selected to participate and complete the requirements of the study will receive $75 and free information about the air quality in their home.

The goal of this study is to collect information about indoor air quality in homes in California, and to better understand what factors affect indoor air quality. To achieve this goal, the research team plans to monitor indoor air quality parameters for one-week periods in homes in California, and to have the residents of these homes complete a survey about their household activities and appliance characteristics. They will be studying homes that have natural gas appliances.

For more information: http://healthyhomes.lbl.gov/

From the Heat Islands Group of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division of Berkeley Lab:

A recent Journal of Climate paper by Stanford’s Mark Jacobson and John Ten Hoeve (2011) on urban heat islands and cool roofs is a useful contribution to the literature. However, their results regarding white roofs are preliminary and uncertain. Along with our own work at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, other published papers have addressed the broader benefits of white roofs. In our view, these studies taken together raise important issues that need to be considered from a policy standpoint to fully understand the potential of more reflective (white or cool) surfaces.

Jacobson and Ten Hoeve note that reflecting light from white roofs may lead to a decrease in cloud cover, thereby increasing, not decreasing, the urban heat effect. But they also note that their findings might change if they used different models. This is an ongoing research area not only for their group, but others, and ours as well. The findings should not be considered settled.

We have found that white roofs do provide a low-cost solution that can help buildings reduce energy costs, in a wide variety of climates, as well as cool the atmosphere regionally and globally. We have also found disadvantages. The reflective roofs may cause unwanted glare, for example, and may modestly increase heating costs in winter. But answers to these issues are exactly the ones we’re working hard to find.

More information.

A technical response.

New materials are crucial to building a clean energy economy—for everything from batteries to photovoltaics to lighter weight vehicles—but today the development cycle is too slow: around 18 years from conception to commercialization. To speed up this process, a team of researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) teamed up to develop a new tool, called the Materials Project, which launches this month.

“Our vision is for this tool to become a dynamic ‘Google’ of material properties, which continually grows and changes as more users come on board to analyze the results, verify against experiments and increase their knowledge,” says Kristin Persson, a Berkeley Lab chemist and one of the founding scientists behind the Materials Project. “So many scientists can benefit from this type of screening. Considering the demand for innovative clean energy technology we needed most of these materials yesterday.”

Read the rest.

It’s a grand challenge: develop clean, sustainable technologies that deliver a low-carbon energy future, and through innovation, create jobs, new markets, and exports, and increase America’s energy security.

Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have made it their mission to develop low-carbon and energy-efficient technologies such as advanced materials and information technology for buildings; next-generation biofuels; new battery, fuel cell, and thermoelectric energy-storage technologies; and carbon capture and sequestration technologies. This Lab-wide effort is called Carbon Cycle 2.0, bringing together teams of scientists from throughout Berkeley Lab to do the R&D for sustainable energy solutions, at the lab where modern team-based science was first developed and practiced in the 1930s, by founding Director Ernest O. Lawrence.

But what impact will these technologies—still in the laboratory, not yet in the marketplace—actually have? How much will they reduce energy, water and materials use throughout their life cycles, how much could they mitigate climate change, and what are their health and economic impacts?

Scientists in Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division (EETD), in cooperation with colleagues throughout the Lab, have formed a team to evaluate these impacts: the Carbon Cycle 2.0 Energy and Environmental Analysis Team (E2AT), led by EETD’s Eric Masanet.

“It’s a fairly new approach for the Lab,” says Masanet, “to use the analytic lenses we’ve developed here in EETD to analyze the costs, and energy, water, materials and climate change impacts of technologies that are still in the research and development phases. This effort is scientifically much more challenging than analyses of technologies that are already in the marketplace.”

“The ultimate goal of the work,” he adds, “is to provide guidance to scientists, funding agencies, and policymakers about which technology options are the most beneficial to pursue—which have the largest potential impact cost-effectively.”

Read the rest: http://eetd.lbl.gov/news-archives/news-carbon-cycle-finds.html

With companion article “A Closer Look at Carbon Sequestration”:

http://eetd.lbl.gov/news-archives/news-carbon-cycle.html

Current standards for U.S. offices require approximately 8 liters per second (L/s) of outdoor air ventilation per person. Providing twice as much ventilation would reduce sick building syndrome symptoms (SBS) and absences, improve work performance, and provide billions of dollars in annual economic benefits in the U.S., according to a recent study from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).
Tall Building

A second study found that four remedial measures in U.S. offices—increasing low ventilation rates, improving temperature controls so that offices don’t get too hot in winter, performing dampness and mold remediation, and adding economizers—would reduce adverse health effects and health care costs, decrease absence rates, improve thermal comfort, and improve work performance. The projected societal economic benefits of non-overlapping combinations of these remedial measures range from $17 billion to $26 billion per year.

These are among the conclusions of scientists at Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division reporting the results of studies in two recently published journal articles.

Read the rest: http://eetd.lbl.gov/news-archives/news-ventilation.html

Nearly all cars sold in California have air conditioners. Cars painted with reflective coatings stay cooler in the sun and are easier to air condition to a comfortable temperature, according to a recent study by researchers in Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division.

“Solar reflective paints can decrease the ‘soak’ temperature of the air in a car that has been parked in the sun. This could improve the vehicle’s fuel economy by letting the manufacturer install a smaller air conditioner that draws less power from the engine,” says Ronnen Levinson, scientist in the Heat Island Group, and lead author of the study. The research was published in Applied Energy.

White, silver, and other light colors are coolest, reflecting about 60% of sunlight. However, dark “cool colors” that reflect primarily in the invisible “near infrared” part of the solar spectrum can also stay cooler than traditional dark colors.

Read the rest: http://eetd.lbl.gov/news-archives/news-cool-cars.html

Teaming up to fight against escalating energy costs, the Department of Defense, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), and Philips Corporation are demonstrating advanced energy-efficient lighting controls technologies in Fort Irwin, California.

“The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that these technologies work in typical applications and buildings at Fort Irwin, and to provide the technical experience and data to support scaling up these energy-efficient systems at Department of Defense facilities throughout the U.S.,” says Francis Rubinstein, a scientist in Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division.

Read the rest: http://eetd.lbl.gov/news-archives/news-defense-efficiency.html

A new policy brief on the value of energy performance and green attributes in buildings, authored by Elizabeth Stuart, is available.

Labels, certifications, and rating systems for energy efficiency performance and “green” attributes of buildings have been available in the U.S. for over 10 years, and used extensively in the European Union and Australia for longer. Such certifications and ratings can make energy efficiency more visible, and could help spur demand for energy efficiency if these designations are shown to have a positive impact on sales or rental prices. This policy brief discusses the findings and methodologies from recent studies on this topic, and suggests recommendations for future research. Although there have been just a handful of studies within the last 10 years that have investigated these effects, a few key findings have emerged.

Download “The Value of Energy Performance and Green Attributes in Buildings: A Review of Existing Literature and Recommendations for Future Research.”

Download at http://eetd.lbl.gov/EAP/EMP/reports/ee-policybrief_090711.pdf

NASA-Ames sent the following press release today.

MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. – NASA’s Ames Research Center and the Department of Energy (DOE), at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, Calif. are collaborating on technologies and processes for what may be the “greenest,” highest-performing building in the federal government.

Originally developed for aerospace applications, NASA intelligent system software will be installed in the new building, called Sustainability Base, by Ames engineers. These NASA-developed control and Integrated Systems Health Management (ISHM) technologies will be an integral part of the building. To help integrate these “smart system” technologies, the Building Technologies Department at Berkeley Lab developed a Building Information Model (BIM) to serve as the repository for the building’s systems information during its life cycle. Using data from the BIM, Berkeley Lab developed an energy-performance simulation model to optimize the building’s energy operations.

Read the rest: http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2011/11-72AR.html

A technology with the potential to increase the lithium-ion storage capacity of advanced batteries by eight times has been awarded a $240,000 grant from the University of California’s Discovery proof-of-concept grant program to accelerate its entrance into the marketplace. This project is led by Gao Liu (Principal Investigator) and Vince Battaglia (co-PI) in the Environmental Energy Technologies Division.

Developed by Gao Liu, the technology is a conductive polymer binder that significantly improves the performance of electrodes in silicon composite electrodes. Silicon is a high energy-capacity material for negative electrodes that also has a long life cycle in batteries. Lithium ion batteries with silicon electrodes could have up to 25 percent higher energy storage capacity than current batteries, and longer product lifetime through many cycles of charging and discharging.

Given equivalent vehicle weight, this means that an electric vehicle could travel 25 percent farther on one charge. The technology could potentially lead to EVs with a 250-mile per charge range.

The promise of silicon as an electrode

“Silicon is a very promising material as a negative electrode [anode] for batteries,” says Liu. “ It has ten times the capacity of graphite. The problem is that silicon is not stable. Its volume increases and decreases as electric charge travels to and from the electrode.”

With existing binders, the pathway of the electric current will breach as the silicon expands, preventing the charges from moving—like the breaking of an electrical circuit.

“Our conductive polymer binder is very effective in lithium-ion batteries,” says Liu. “As it expands and contracts, it holds the silicon particles together, maintaining the conductive path.”

“The conductive polymer binder,” adds Liu, “ can not only be used with our silicon electrode, but with other battery chemistries and technologies as well. Many other battery-related applications are possible with this binder.”

The research work that led to the technology has been funded by the Battery for Advanced Transportation Technologies program (BATT) of Office of Vehicle Technologies, U.S. Department of Energy. The BATT program continues to fund the basic research.

The UC Discovery Fund is designed for technologies that have already demonstrated successful results in the research environment and are poised for commercialization but are in need of a specific, targeted demonstration, test result, or prototype.

Technology Transfer Department Helps Identify Marketplace Barriers

The Technology Transfer Department’s Shanshan Li worked closely with Liu to clarify the potential market applications and barriers to commercialization, as well as develop tangible development milestones that will most likely attract commercial interest to license the technology.

“The technology has generated high-profile interest from battery manufacturers, suppliers, and investors,” says Li. “But we identified two primary barriers to commercialization: providing a large quantity of samples for testing, and optimizing the performance of the electrode in battery systems. The UC Discovery proof-of-concept grant serves an important role in making the lab to market transition of this technology possible.”

Unlike the other UC Discovery grants, the proof-of-concept program does not require matching industry funds. However, for Berkeley Lab researchers, applying for the grant would have been impractical because the fund only covers the direct cost of research. In collaboration with Berkeley Lab leadership, The Technology Transfer Department found a way to use the licensing royalty funds to cover the indirect cost, making it possible for Berkeley Lab researchers like Liu to apply.

Read the UC Discovery Grant press release here: http://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/news/article/26297

For more information on the technologies, “conductive binder for lithium ion battery electrode” and “silicon composite electrode for advanced lithium ion batteries,” see:
http://www.lbl.gov/Tech-Transfer/techs/lbnl2643,2890.html

Read a story about proof-of-concept grants here.
http://research.universityofcalifornia.edu/stories/2011/09/proof-concept-grants.html

Technical contact: Gao Liu, gliu@lbl.gov
Technology Transfer Department: 510-486-5366,  shanshanli@lbl.gov

Berkeley, CA — The installed cost of solar photovoltaic (PV) power systems in the United States fell substantially in 2010 and into the first half of 2011, according to the latest edition of an annual PV cost tracking report released by the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab).

The average installed cost of residential and commercial PV systems completed in 2010 fell by roughly 17 percent from the year before, and by an additional 11 percent within the first six months of 2011. These recent installed cost reductions are attributable, in part, to dramatic reductions in the price of PV modules. Galen Barbose of Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division and co-author of the report explains, “Wholesale PV module prices have fallen precipitously since about 2008, and those upstream cost reductions have made their way through to consumers.”

The report indicates that non-module costs – such as installation labor, marketing, overhead, inverters, and the balance of systems – also fell for residential and commercial PV systems in 2010. “The drop in non-module costs is especially important,” notes report co-author Ryan Wiser, “as those are the costs that can be most readily influenced by solar policies aimed at accelerating deployment and removing market barriers, as opposed to research and development programs that are also aimed at reducing module costs.” According to the report, average non-module costs for residential and commercial systems declined by roughly 18 percent from 2009 to 2010.

Turning to utility-sector PV, costs varied over a wide range for systems installed in 2010, with the cost of systems greater than 5,000 kilowatts (kW) ranging from $2.90 per Watt (W) to $6.20/W, reflecting differences in project size and system configuration, as well as the unique characteristics of certain individual projects. Consistent with continued cost reductions, current benchmarks for the installed cost of prototypical, large utility-scale PV projects generally range from $3.80/W to $4.40/W.

The market for solar PV systems in the United States has grown rapidly over the past decade, as national, state and local governments offered various incentives to expand the solar market and accelerate cost reductions. The study–the fourth in Berkeley Lab’s “Tracking the Sun” report series–describes trends in the installed cost of PV in the United States, and examined more than 115,000 residential, commercial, and utility-sector PV systems installed between 1998 and 2010 across 42 states, representing roughly 78 percent of all grid-connected PV capacity installed in the United States. Naïm Darghouth, also with Berkeley Lab, explains that “the study is intended to provide policy makers and industry observers with a reliable and detailed set of historical benchmarks for tracking and understanding past trends in the installed cost of PV.”

Costs Differ by Region and by Size and Type of System

The study also highlights differences in installed costs by region and by system size and installation type. Comparing across U.S. states, for example, the average cost of PV systems installed in 2010 and less than 10 kilowatts (kW) in size ranged from $6.30/W to $8.40/W depending on the state. The report also found that residential PV systems installed on new homes had significantly lower average installed costs than those installed as retrofits to existing homes.

Based on these data and on installed cost data from the sizable German and Japanese PV markets, the authors suggest that PV costs may be driven lower through large-scale deployment programs, but that other factors are also important in achieving cost reductions.

The report also shows that PV installed costs exhibit significant economies of scale. Among systems installed in 2010, those smaller than 2 kW averaged $9.80/W, while large commercial systems >1,000 kW averaged $5.20/W; partial-year data for 2011 suggests that average costs declined even further in 2011. Large utility-sector systems installed in 2010 registered even lower costs, with a number of systems in the $3.00/W to $4.00/W range.

Cost Declines for PV System Owners in 2010 Were Partially Offset by Falling Incentives

The average size of direct cash incentives provided through state and utility PV incentive programs has declined steadily since their peak in 2002. The dollar-per-Watt benefit of the federal investment tax credit (ITC) and Treasury grant in lieu of the ITC, which are based on a percentage of installed cost, also fell in 2010 as a result of the drop in average installed costs.

The reduced value of federal, state, and utility incentives in 2010 partially offset the decline in installed costs. Therefore, while pre-incentive installed costs fell by $1.00/W and $1.50/W for residential and commercial PV in 2010, respectively, the decline in “net” (or post-incentive) installed costs fell by $0.40/W for residential PV and by $0.80/W for commercial PV.

The report “Tracking the Sun IV: An Historical Summary of the Installed Cost of Photovoltaics in the United States from 1998 to 2010,” by Galen Barbose, Naïm Darghouth, and Ryan Wiser, may be downloaded from http://eetd.lbl.gov/ea/emp/reports/lbnl-5047e.pdf .

The research was supported by funding from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and by the Clean Energy States Alliance, a national nonprofit coalition of leading state clean energy programs that work together to advance renewable energy project deployment in their states and across the country.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world’s most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab’s scientific expertise has been recognized with 12 Nobel prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. For more, visit www.lbl.gov.

http://newscenter.lbl.gov/news-releases/2011/09/15/tracking-the-sun-iv/

A new policy brief for energy efficiency contractors and program managers describes how adding sales and business skills to contractor technical skills and certifications can increase the rate of customer conversions from home energy assessment to comprehensive home energy upgrade. It was prepared by Megan Billingsley and Elizabeth Stuart the Electricity Markets and Policy Group of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division.

Discussed in the brief is the case of Efficiency Maine, which provides one practical solution that worked for its contractors. Efficiency Maine increased the rate of success of its home performance program by providing contractors in its program with a two-day sales training class. The program steadily increased the rate of conversions from energy assessment to energy upgrade from August 2010 when the first workshop was held, to 50 percent by the April to May 2011 timeframe.

The brief also provides advice from a contractor on how to improve a business’s energy upgrade conversion rate, and additional resources for both program managers and contractors.

Funding for this work was provided by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.

Download the brief here.

View other publications here.

Researchers, government agencies, and roofing manufacturers from around the world gathered in Berkeley in July 2011 to discuss the latest cool roof research. These solar reflective materials reduce energy use and help cool the planet by reflecting sunlight to outer space. Their use has begun to soar in markets around the world thanks to their economic and environmental benefits.

The International Workshop on Advances in Cool Roof Research was organized by the Heat Island Group of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) and by representatives of Concordia University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the U.S. Department of Energy.

One focus of the workshop was on understanding how roof materials age, including how quickly their ability to reflect sunlight changes, and how to best simulate this natural aging with accelerated laboratory processes under development at Berkeley Lab and at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Currently, the solar reflectance of a cool roof is rated after three years of natural exposure in three different U.S. climate zones, as required by the U.S. Cool Roof Rating Council. Developing accelerated aging test protocols is important to expedite the introduction of new cool roof products to market.

Meeting attendees also discussed how to incorporate cool roof requirements in building codes and how to develop an internationally recognized standard for natural and accelerated aging of roofing materials.

Marc LaFrance, Manager for building envelope and windows research and development programs at the U.S. Department of Energy in the Office of Building Technology, welcomed participants, especially international visitors who had traveled a long way, by audio feed from Washington D.C. He urged the group to work to develop accelerated aging test protocols that provide results faster than the current three-year standard for natural exposure.

Ashok Gadgil, Director of Berkeley Lab’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division also welcomed the participants with an overview of EETD’s research and a brief description of the Lab’s current project of installing cool roof shingles on one of its major national user research facilities—the Advanced Light Source.

Art Rosenfeld, Distinguished Scientist Emeritus at Berkeley Lab and former California Energy Commissioner, delivered a noontime talk showcasing the growing installation of cool roofs around the globe. He discussed recent Berkeley Lab research quantifying the capacity of cool roofs to cool the Earth’s atmosphere. “If we whitened all possible urban roofs worldwide,” he points out, “it would be equivalent to removing the carbon dioxide emissions of 300 million cars for 20 years.” Or in different terms, it offsets the emissions of 500 medium-sized coal-fired power plants.

Ronnen Levinson discussed the quantitative energy, climate and economic benefits of cool roofs. Dev Millstein presented his climate simulation studies to better understand the potential impact of cool roofs on the Earth’s climate. Berkeley Lab researchers Mohamad Sleiman and Hugo Destaillats presented version 1.0 of their accelerated aging protocols, which combines soiling and weathering cycles and mimics well in only three days the changes in solar reflectance exhibited by three-year-old naturally exposed roof samples.

A second day of presentations highlighted the growing international standardization and use of cool roof materials in the European Union, Japan, Australia and India. In another session, presenters provided a U.S. perspective on the influence of policies and codes on the adoption of cool roofs. Kurt Shickman, Executive Director of the Global Cool Cities Alliance, described his organization’s efforts to promote cool buildings and cities globally, to reduce energy use and the urban heat island and to mitigate the effects of climate change. Doug Davenport of Berkeley Lab described the San Jose Cool City Pilot project, a partnership between the city, Berkeley Lab, the Global Cool Cities Alliance, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Peter Turnbull, Principal Program Manager of Commercial Buildings and Zero Net Energy Program Manager at Pacific Gas and Electric, discussed the lessons learned on how to diffuse this new technology effectively though his company’s Northern California service area, and how their experience might be used by other utilities.

The meeting’s 86 participants represented seven countries (China, India, Australia, and European nations among them) and 25 companies. Among the industry attendees were 22 roofing and coating manufacturers, including BASF, Dow, GAF, and CertainTeed; two weathering testing firms, ATLAS and Q-Lab; and photovoltaic manufacturer Solyndra.

U.S. and international organizations represented included the Cool Roof Rating Council, the California Air Resources Board, California Energy Commission; Global Cool Cities Alliance; Pacific Gas & Electric Company; Reflective Roof Coatings Institute; Research Institute of Standards and Norms, Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, China; Energy Foundation Beijing Office, China; Japan Paint Manufacturers Association; and the Roofing Tile Association.

—Allan Chen

The meeting’s schedule and presentations are online here: http://coolroofs2011.lbl.gov/schedule

Recently, EETD’s Thomas Kirchstetter, and Tim Dallman and Robert Harley of the University of California, Berkeley, presented the results of a study on the emissions of PM (particulate matter) and NOx (nitrogen oxides) from trucks at the Port of Oakland. The occasion was an August 4th hearing in Oakland, California, convened by Alameda County supervisors to discuss requirements that trucks accessing the Port reduce the pollution they emit.

Communities near ports, rail yards and trucking hubs experience a disproportionately high level of PM emissions. These emissions are suspected to have human health impacts.

Most of the trucks entering the Port had higher pollution emissions rates compared to new trucks. The California Air Resources Board adopted a rule requiring, in its first phase, the replacement or PM-reduction retrofit of trucks of model years 2003 or older entering the Port of Oakland by the start of 2010. Pre-1994 models were prohibited. More than 1,300 trucks were retrofit with diesel particle control filters. Retrofits were paid in part by $25 million in grants from CARB, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, and the Port of Oakland. Truck owners paid a portion of the costs.

The study conducted by Kirchstetter, Dallman, and Harley measured the emissions rates of PM and NOx from hundreds of trucks  at the Port to determine the effects of the CARB regulation. The team made their measurements in November 2009 and June 2010. Most of the changes to Port trucks occurred between these periods.

At the hearing, Kirchstetter reported their finding that the CARB regulation resulted in decreases in average pollutant emission rates from Port trucks: a 50 percent decrease in PM and a 40 percent reduction in NOx. Moreover, the accelerated clean-up at the Port reduced truck emissions in the span of a few months by the about same amount that at another location not subject to the CARB rule took ten years.

To see a video of some of the research team’s data, go to http://eetd.lbl.gov/news-archives/news-oakland-port.html.