The NIST researchers undertook their study using two adjacent offices in one of the general purpose buildings on the NIST campus. The building is typical of those constructed on the NIST campus in the early to mid-1960s.
One of the two offices served as the control office and the second office was modified to reduce the flow of energy through the exterior wall. Each room was carefully instrumented to determine energy savings that could be realized through various energy savings options while maintaining identical levels of comfort.
The unmodified control office has a single-pane glass window unit and an antiquated heating and cooling unit. Thermal insulation was not present between the exterior walls of the office and the interior space. Significant air leakage occurred between the interior of the office and the outdoor air as a result of numerous gaps and voids in the exterior wall.
In the modified office all air leaks were sealed The exterior walls were insulated with approximately 9 inches of glass-fiber insulation and the more than 40-year-old single-pane glass window was replaced with a double-pane, argon-filled insulated glass window unit. A forced air heating and cooling unit was installed in the attic to deliver conditioned air to the office module, replacing the antiquated heating and cooling system that required piping in the office module walls. Energy upgrade expenditures came to approximately $2,825.
Measurements made to compare the energy required to maintain the control and modified office modules at identical conditions revealed a 59 percent savings. Annual cost savings from the energy upgrades, based on 2007 energy prices, came to approximately $195 per year. The researchers used NIST’s Cost Effectiveness Tool for Capital Asset Protection software to figure in a three percent annual energy price escalation rate. They found that over a 25-year period the improvements would generate an average $1.75 for each dollar invested.
NIST will begin implementing the research findings in April. In the first phase 22 offices will be upgraded with the energy savings features. The remaining 85 offices will be modified in 2009 and 2010.
Source: NIST
Related stories:
Disorder Enables Extreme Sensitivity in Piezoelectric Materials
A research team working at the National Institute of Standards and Technology has found an explanation for the extreme sensitivity to mechanical pressure or voltage of a special class of solid materials called relaxors. The ability to control and tailor this sensitivity would allow industry to enhance a range of devices used in medical ultrasound imaging, loudspeakers, sonar and computer hard drives.
Possible Mechanism for Enormous Electromechanical Response
Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy's Brookhaven National Laboratory and collaborators at Stony Brook University, Johns Hopkins University, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology have discovered that nanosized regions with local polarizations, or "electric dipoles," in a special class of otherwise disordered materials may underlie these materials' extreme electromechanical response to an external electric field or physical deformation.
Micro Microwave Does Pinpoint Cooking for Miniaturized Labs
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology and George Mason University have demonstrated what is probably the world’s smallest microwave oven, a tiny mechanism that can heat a pinhead-sized drop of liquid inside a container slightly shorter than an ant and half as wide as a single hair. The micro microwave is intended for lab-on-a-chip devices that perform rapid, complex chemical analyses on tiny samples.
New Quantum Dot Transistor Counts Individual Photons
A transistor containing quantum dots that can count individual photons (the smallest particles of light) has been designed and demonstrated at the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
New advance is step toward quantum computing with neutral atoms
Physicists at the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology have induced thousands of atoms trapped by laser beams to swap “spins” with partners simultaneously.
NIST Bullet Tests Make Frangibles More Tangible
Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology are measuring precisely the disintegration of “frangible” bullets when they strike a surface to better understand how the ammunition might affect body armor.
Copper Ridges Nearly Double X-ray Sensor Performance
A series of copper ridges nearly doubles the resolution of experimental X-ray sensors, enabling more precise identification of the X-ray “fingerprints” of different atoms, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) report. The sensors are expected to be powerful tools for astronomy, such as in determining the temperature and motion of matter in space, and for semiconductor materials analysis, helping to differentiate between nanoscale contaminant particles on silicon wafers.
World's First UV 'Ruler' Sizes Up Atomic World
The world's most accurate "ruler" made with extreme ultraviolet light has been built and demonstrated with ultrafast laser pulses by scientists at JILA, a joint institute of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the University of Colorado at Boulder.
The new device, which consistently generates pulses of light lasting just femtoseconds (quadrillionths of a second, or millionths of a billionth of a second) in the ultraviolet region of the electromagnetic spectrum, is described in the May 20 issue of Physical Review Letters.*
