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Saving Energy in Small Office Buildings
Roland Piquepaille writes "Precooling a structure in the morning before temperatures rise has been done before. It later saves energy during times of peak demand and you might even have done it intuitively at home. But now, engineers from Purdue University have developed a control algorithm which promises to reduce energy consumption -- and electricity bills -- by as much as 30 percent for small office buildings which represent the majority of commercial structures. So far, this method has only been tested in California, but the researchers say that their control software could be used anywhere after minor adaptations."
This precooling... Wont it be uncomfortable for the people inside since you have constant temperature changes? I wouldn't want my place to get super cold in the morning just so that it levels off by the afternoon.
Why not develop some kind of air chamber that could be installed in a building that is insulated so air could be cooled off-peak but then released on-demand? Or maybe a pressurized tank?
Ahh, but pre-cooling in the morning is going to be more efficient because you don't have the hot afternoon sun beating through the building's windows and warming the exterior. The biggest "win" from TFA is that the research team was able to cobble together an algorithm that can provide up to 30% energy savings while conducting the pre-cooling. Even if everyone and their dog shifts electrical use to the morning, the smart cooling technique would still save power. It would still stagger demand, since homeowners wouldn't use similar techniques and will be sucking massive amounts of power in the afternoon. That said, the long-term solution to this problem is to build more environmentally sensible buildings. Tall glass boxes don't let designers take advantage of strategic window placement, white roofs, clever ventilation, earth walls (or even huge stone interior walls that can act as thermal sinks to reduce temperature fluctuations). Air conditioning is actually a pretty ugly solution to the problem.