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."

Comments

Re:But wait...

[MickLinux]

One thing that would work for a more comfortable environment I have seen mentioned on a book about "nearly free energy" (free as in beer, not free as in perpetual motion).

The idea is to build the building entirely out of double-T girders (walls, roof, and ground) so that there is a layer of air around the entire building. (Note that a double-T girder looks like this: TT). The spikes of the T should point outwards. Then, you glass in the walls, cover the roof with aluminum, and drive heat tubes into the ground below the bottom.

The sun will strike the windows on one side, and heat the air there, sending it to the roof where it cools, drops down the far side, and cycle under the building, where the heat tubes have the greatest effect on the overall temperature of the cycling air, keeping it at about 58 degrees. The presence of people and office machines inside raises the ambient temperature to about 68... actually quite comfortable for an office building.

Of course, this energy isn't completely free. The glass costs something, and the girders aren't cheap, though there nearly indestructable. In that sense, the control algorithm beats the passive design hands-down.