Blog - Smart Buildings Center

Next Steps in Seattle Building Energy Efficiency

September 3, 2015 By Vamsi

Did you know that buildings are responsible for 33% of Seattle’s core emissions? Or that The City of Seattle is aiming for a 39% net reduction in building-related emissions by 2030 and an 82% net reduction by 2050?

These stats come out of The City of Seattle’s Office of Sustainability and Environment and they are hosting an open house in a couple of weeks. The focus will be on the next steps in meeting their climate action goals. The meeting will be on September 14th from 11am – 1pm in the Bertha Landes Room in Seattle City Hall. If you would like to attend, please RSVP at [email protected]

For more information visit www.seattle.gov/nextGenEE

September 14, 2015
11:00am to 1:00pm
Bertha Knight Landes Room
Seattle City Hall
600 4th Ave, Seattle WA 98104

Photo: Adobe Stock/Paul Fell

Tools, Tools and More Tools!

August 5, 2015 By Vamsi

Many of you have been asking for updates on our Tool Lending Library, specifically which tools we plan on carrying. While this list is continually evolving, we do have a list that has been recently updated. Tools are starting to arrive and Lucie and Carol are having a great time opening boxes (minus the paper cuts) and are really enjoying testing the equipment (yes, we love energy efficiency THAT much). Here are two items that will soon be available from the Smart Building Center Tool Lending Library.

Data Loggers

Do you want to measure the temperature in an office where many people are complaining that it’s too cold? If so, Onset Hobo 4-Channel Loggers allow you to measure important information like: Temperature, Relative Humidity, Light Intensity, AC Voltage, Air Velocity, and Carbon Dioxide. The Loggers can take Temperature readings from -4°F to 158°F, Relative Humidity from 0% to 95%, and Foot-Candles from 1 to 3,000. Data can be gathered in 1-second to 18-hour intervals. The Loggers also come with downloadable software to help analyze the data.

Flexible support for a wide range of external sensors
LCD confirms logger operation and displays near real-time measurement data
On-screen alarms notify you when a sensor reading exceeds set thresholds
Stores 1.9 million measurements for longer deployments between offloads
Compatible with HOBOware and HOBOware Pro software for logger setup, graphing

Combustion Analyzer

Another tool we carry is a Combustion Analyzer. The tool can calculate and display efficiency, excess air, Carbon Dioxide, and air-free Carbon Monoxide. Through our lending program, you could use this tool to set-up, clean, and check fuel burning appliances. It can also be used for Boiler maintenance, service work, and Carbon Monoxide testing.

Stay tuned as we highlight more tools we will be carrying in our library.

Smart Buildings Strategy Workshop at PSRC

August 4, 2015 By Vamsi

Do you know our friends over at the Puget Sound Regional Council? The PSRC is a great local organization that “works to ensure a thriving central Puget Sound now and into the future through planning for regional transportation, growth management and economic development.” They are hosting an event on August 12th that you should definitely check out!

The “Developing Your Smart Buildings Strategy” workshop will bring in city staff, public utilities, and building operators to talk about how to create a smart buildings program. The workshop will share insights from Seattle’s High Performance Building Pilot (see video below) and King County’s Energy-Smart Buildings Program. Commercial buildings in the US waste about $50 billion per year in energy costs. Find out how Seattle and King County are using smart buildings technology to plug that energy drain, and how your community can do the same.

More information and workshop registration details may be found here.

Please contact Sasha Anderson at [email protected] with questions.

NEEC is turning 20!

July 23, 2015 By Vamsi

Founded in 1995, the Northwest Energy Efficiency Council (NEEC) has been serving the energy efficiency industry in the Northwest. Smart Buildings Center’s parent organization is going to be celebrating their 20-year anniversary on August 11th from 10am – 1pm at the Pacific Tower in Seattle, and we would love you to join us! We will be celebrating NEEC’s accomplishments within the energy efficiency industry and its power and potential as a driver of economic productivity with an industry panel of end user customers. Also as a special treat, Senator Maria Cantwell with be sharing her perspective on energy and the role it plays in the state’s economy. We couldn’t be more excited for you to join us, please see the details below including a link to RSVP at. Hurry, this limited event is filling up fast!

As one of the oldest energy efficiency industry associations in the United States, NEEC is celebrating its 20 year anniversary with an exciting event featuring keynote speaker Senator Maria Cantwell and showcasing the accomplishments of the energy efficiency industry and its power and potential as a driver of economic productivity. A panel of end use customers will describe their views on how energy services factor into their business now and in the future

Industry Panel: Energy Efficiency in the next 20 Years: A Customer Perspective

Panelists:

Emma Karlsson, Director of Sustainability, JSH Properties
Chris Roe, Energy Resource Manager, Boeing
Darrell Smith, Director of Facilities Operations and Energy, Microsoft

And don’t miss out on a complimentary lunch featuring a keynote address by Senator Maria Cantwell and her perspective on legislation and the role energy plays in the state’s economy.

For more information, go to the NEEC website. Registration is free but space is very limited.

Sending Thanks

June 29, 2015 By Vamsi

It’s been a little while since we have spoken about our Tool Lending Library and Smart Buildings Center has been working diligently to make this available. We’ve already ordered several tools (more on that next week), received many shipments, and are readying our system to begin lending them out.

The Tool Lending Library is going to be a great resource towards energy efficiency for the State of Washington, and Smart Buildings Center would be remiss without making sure we thanked some key players in helping us move forward with this project. Our neighbors at PG&E have been operating a Tool Lending Library for over 20 years, and when Smart Buildings Center was interested in creating our Library we went straight to them! Take a peek at the PG&E Tool Library. Bill Pottinger and Ryan Stroupe at the PG&E Pacific Energy Center Tool Library have been a tremendous resource and have been so generous with their time, experience, and expertise. They were even willing to have us come see their Library twice, thanks Bill and Ryan! You rock!

Smart Buildings Center meet with industry leaders

June 9, 2015 By Vamsi

Smart Buildings Center relies heavily on advice from members of the industry to allow us to provide the most effective services to our “customers”. Regardless of whether that input is coming from a building owner, a building/construction services company, or an operator of a building, that knowledge is incredibly valuable. Fine tuning our products and services at our new SBC home in the Pacific Tower has been on our minds for a while now, so we organized a charrette. For those of you who aren’t fluent in French, a charrette is an intense, freewheeling discussion.

In an 8th Floor conference room in the Pacific Tower, a group of 15 or so facility directors, energy engineers, and product folks got together with SBC staff to share ideas and suggestions on how to best create value from core SBC services like tool lending and analytical tools.

Things got granular right away. How long can the tools be borrowed? How does the SBC ensure appropriate use of the tools by sufficiently qualified users? How does the reservation system work? We were glad to hear an extremely positive response from both building owner/operators and service providers on the basic concept of making diagnostic tools more generally available. The conversation really helped us both refine the list of tools we want to offer and to think through the mechanics of making the library work to best serve our community.

We then steered the conversation toward our other big SBC lift – creating a showcase for the opportunity when “Smart meets efficient”. New analytic and visualization tools are exploding on the market and our stakeholder group both showed excitement about them and expressed the need for better market information and education about what they are, what they do, and when and where they are most appropriate. We walked away from that discussion with pledges from industry folks to share product information and case study examples which can help us “curate” the SBC space for maximum effect.

The event was incredibly helpful and we are extremely grateful to the following folks for sharing their time and ideas:

Javad Maadanian
Bill Babbitt
Chris Olmsted
Gary Engleson
Darren Schwend
Ian Siadak
Ron Fues
Norm Menter
Jesse Sycuro
Moe Salem
Perry England

Data Loggers

Combustion Analyzer

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