ETA 2021 Strategic Plan - Flipbook - Page 52
FLEXLAB®
Indoor Air Quality
and COVID
With more frequent
climate-driven extreme
events such as wildfires,
and new challenges
such as the COVID-19
pandemic, FLEXLAB’s
advanced HVAC systems
and flexible configuration
play a significant role in
investigating how building
controls, occupant
behavior, and air cleaning
technologies impact
occupant exposure to
airborne pathogens,
wildfire smoke, and
other harmful outdoor
air pollutants. During
the COVID-19 global
pandemic, FLEXLAB has
offered a unique testbed
environment to study
the drivers of airborne
transport and the fate
of SARS-CoV-2 in the
built environment. This
capability will continue
to be used to study the
relationships between
building energy efficiency,
indoor air quality, and
occupant health.
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Studying and Optimizing Integrated
Systems
Buildings use more than two-thirds of the electricity
consumed in the United States, and piecemeal
approaches to energy efficiency are not sufficient to
achieve large-scale energy reductions. To unlock deeper
levels of efficiency and optimize energy savings in
grid-integrated buildings, researchers developed the
first testbed in the world that can evaluate the energy
performance of major building systems and distributed
energy resources (DER) as an integrated system, under
real world conditions. FLEXLAB, the Facility for Low
Energy Experiments, enables architects, utility companies,
government agencies, manufacturers, builders, owners,
and others to take a whole-building systems approach
to uncover new ways to design buildings and integrate
systems for maximum performance. The U.S. DOE’s
Facility for Low Energy Experiments (FLEXLAB), at Berkeley
Lab, enables architects, utility companies, government
agencies, manufacturers, builders, owners, and others
to take a whole-building systems approach to uncover
new ways to design buildings and integrate systems for
maximum performance.
Based on Berkeley Lab’s 30 years of testbed experience,
this new large-scale testing facility allows users to test
building systems and DERs as integrated whole-building
systems or individually. Users can build out and equip any
of FLEXLAB’s one- and two-story testbeds to mimic a real
commercial or multifamily residential building, installing
everything from furniture and flooring to lighting,
shading, windows, building integrated photovoltaics, and
diverse heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC)
systems. FLEXLAB can be used to study water-based
heating and cooling, such as radiant floor systems, and
the facility also provides air-based heating, cooling, and a
state-of-the-art ventilation system.
FLEXLAB is made up of four stand-alone testbeds
and an occupied plug-load and lighting testbed. Each
of the four stand-alone testbeds is made up of two
600 square foot cells, and one of those testbeds
rotates. A unique capability is that each testbed has
identical cells, allowing side-by-side comparisons
of energy-efficient technologies to a base case that
can match real-world situations, such as an existing
building or energy code condition. FLEXLAB’s
rotating testbed allows users to develop window
and daylighting strategies to manage different solar
and sky conditions and thermal loads as the sun
changes position throughout the course of the day
and year, affecting room temperature and visual
comfort. The rotating testbed allows users to test
under the same thermal loads as every climate
except Alaska’s. Thousands of high-accuracy sensors
installed throughout the facility capture the results,
allowing Berkeley Lab researchers and users to
analyze performance at both the component and
system level. These sensors also help measure
indoor air quality, and thermal and visual comfort
for occupants.
FLEXLAB includes FLEXGRID, a system that studies
controls to manage building demand, onsite
renewables, and storage to address grid issues and
lower costs for building owners. Control strategies
take into account weather, grid conditions, the price
of energy, and possible storage alternatives, such as
a connected electric vehicle’s battery storage.
Since opening in 2014, FLEXLAB has tested
more than 70 energy-efficient technologies and
supported over $65 million in research projects. Our
projects are diverse and have included: evaluating
technologies for a smarter grid that can respond
to fluctuating power demand; validating simulation
tools; and analyzing integrated lighting, shading, and
HVAC packages.
Users have ranged from utilities like Pacific Gas and
Electric Company (which focused on developing
efficiency-incentive programs for customers)
to the biotech firm Genentech (which sought
support of its energy-efficiency decisions for a
new 250,000-square-foot building). FLEXLAB also
supports a wide range of projects for the U.S.
Department of Energy and the California Energy
Commission.
Adaptation and
Resilience
While climate change mitigation
has always been a key focus of
the energy-efficiency research
conducted at FLEXLAB, an
increasing number of projects
are utilizing FLEXLAB’s unique
whole-building and DER systems
capabilities to study approaches
to increase adaptation,
resilience, and reliability. The
rise of renewable energy is
forcing our electric grid to evolve
rapidly, and FLEXLAB’s gridenabled testbed infrastructure
enables users to test strategies
to increase building reliability
and resilience under a range of
simulated and emulated grid
conditions. A wide range of
distributed energy resources
are now available, including onsite photovoltaics and energy
storage with demand flexibility
strategies (such as pre-cooling
building mass). FLEXLAB offers
users a way to evaluate a
combination of these on-site
strategies with automated grid
signals, optimizing energy use
on very rapid time scales. These
capabilities position FLEXLAB
as a unique facility for studying
demand-side strategies and
integrated energy systems
controls to increase resiliency
and achieve energy and
carbon savings.
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