Today, the Structural Insulated Panel Association (SIPA) published a story in their quarterly newsletter about FAS’s presentation at the 2008 ASCE AEI Conference. More information about the conference and presentations, including pdf files of the presentations, can be found here.
You can sign up for the newsletter here, and more information about SIPA can be found on their website at www.sips.org
In August of 2008, UC Berkeley Professor Khalid Mosalam presented a paper coauthored by FAS’s Joe Hagerman and Henry Kelly at the 5th International Engineering and Construction Conference. The paper presents Mosalam’s findings from research into the seismic performance of structural insulated panels. There is a considerable lack of information available about the behavior of SIPs when subjected to seismic loads. The paper focuses on the characterization of the mechanical properties and seismic performance of SIPs using experimental techniques. Specimens studied include both OSB faced and cementitious SIPs, where panels were tested without panel-to-panel connections.
The full text pdf copy of the paper can be found here.
In mid-November, Joe Hagerman and I traveled to China to speak at the US China Green Energy Conference in Beijing, and to meet with officials from Sichuan University and the town of Mianzhu regarding rebuilding housing after the Sichuan Earthquake. Continue reading »
So its been quite a while since I’ve given this blog the attention it deserves. And that’s unfortunate, because we’ve been up to some quite exciting stuff in the past few months, including (among other things): a trip to china about building a demonstration there in the wake of the Sichuan Earthquake, some exciting talks about developing a home energy retrofit plan that would save energy and create jobs, some interesting meetings regarding indoor air quality in manufactured housing, exciting updates on FAS’s research on the seismic capacity of SIPs, as well as some very exciting news in the world of building research.
I’ll be making several posts in the coming weeks to catch things back up to speed, and you can expect more regular updates in the near year.
I’m back from my trip out to Denver for the ASCE AEI Conference, so I’ll be putting up a few posts to catch up on a few things. The first I’d like to update on is the “30 Percent Solution” – an attempt to increase the performance of the model energy code by 30 percent – that I referenced a few posts back.
The final hearings were held in Minneapolis last week, and unfortunately the overall package of energy improvements narrowly failed (receiving over 60% of votes in favor, but not enough to reach the required two thirds majority).
Still, energy efficiency will substantially improve in the nation’s 2009 model energy code governing new home construction, as several individual measures were passed. The 2009 IECC will have several significant new provisions to boost energy efficiency, including:
While FAS is disappointed the measures were not fully passed, these incremental improvements are encouraging. It is also heartening that over 60 percent of attendees voted in its favor, a clear demonstration of its growing support. We hope (and fully expect) that these efforts will continue, and model energy codes will continue to improve.
More information can be found at the EECC’s website.
I just got done presenting at the ASCE AEI Conference out in Denver. Overall, I was pretty happy with how the session went well. I introduced the speakers and topic, and then John Millhone, a senior advisor to FAS, made a very good presentation about the current energy crisis, and how and why buildings need to play an important role in its solution. I think his presentation really gets to the core of FAS’s mission, and is a great preface to our work in policy and new technologies. John’s powerpoint can be found here.
Eric Tompos, the Vice President of NTA Inc., followed John with a presentation on the sources of design information for engineering SIPs, as well as the ways SIPs typically perform. Eric’s discussion taught me quite a few things I hadn’t realized about panel performance, and was huge for any designer planning to use panels. His powerpoint can be found here (with a supplementary, more comprehensive presentation that describe the methods for developing an engineered design method for SIPs in detail found here).
Khalid Mosalam, a professor Civil and Environmental Engineering out at UC Berkeley followed Eric. Professor Mosalam’s presentation explained much of the work he’s been doing in conjunction with FAS. He explained the current approach to seismic evaluation, the development of a pseudo-dynamic approach that is cheaper than large scale shake table tests, and then how that applies to SIPs and CSIPs. A copy of his presentation can be found here. That said, Professor Mosalam’s research deserves a much more in depth look - I’ll write something more significant about it soon.
I concluded the presentation with a discussion of our Pankow research - how to apply CSIPs to multi-story buildings. My presentation can be found here. The followup discussion to the presentations was good - some very interested people from all different segments of the building industry, from engineers to construction managers.
I’m off to Denver later this week for the American Society of Civil Engineers Architectural Engineering Institute’s Annual Conference. FAS has been asked by Dr. Mohammed Ettouney, the conference’s chair, to present our research on applying cementitious structural insulated panels to multi-story buildings at the event.
I will be chairing the presentation, presenting along with John Millhone, Dr. Khalid Mosalem, and Eric Tompos. John is a senior advisor at FAS, and will be speaking about the role of buildings in the carbon economy, and how advanced building technologies offer one of the most important solutions to our national energy problems. Eric, the Executive Vice President of NTA Inc., is a very well respected engineer in the SIP community, and has provided instrumental advice and guidance to FAS throughout the research project. Eric will be presenting generally about SIPs, focusing on the panel mechanics and basic engineering. Dr. Mosalem, a civil engineering professor at the University of California at Berkeley, will present his research on seismic testing of CSIP panels. I will wrap up our session with a talk about the specifics of our research – the multi-story applications of CSIPs, future areas of research, and the overall potential for CSIPs in the architectural and engineering worlds.
I think the conference will be a great opportunity for FAS, and I’m looking forward to a positive dialogue about the research. I’ll be out of touch while at the conference, but I’ll be sure to post a recap afterwards with some thoughts and insights.
Today Google and GE announced a new partnership, teaming to develop smart grid technologies and clean energy. The concept of the smart grid is essentially bringing electricity transmission, distribution, and use into the 21st century through the use of two-way communications, advanced sensors, and distributed computers to improve the efficiency, reliability and safety of power delivery and use. The system has not been integrated into America’s energy distribution system, but the concept offers increased reliability, efficiency and safety of the power grid, enables decentralized power generation so homes can be both an energy client AND supplier (allowing individual loads to tailor their generation directly to their load, making them independent from grid power failures), and enabling flexibility of the power consumption on the clients side.
Developing and implementing this concept will be crucial if plug-in vehicles (getting closer and closer over the horizon) are going to be a benefit instead of a detriment to the electric system. Smart power grids would allow people to conduct tasks such as recharging electric cars at times of day when demand is not high, and enable them to sell solar or other renewable energy back to utility companies.
Surprisingly, it is political and regulatory hurdles, not technological ones, that block the path to revamping the US power grid, and it is this side of the puzzle that this new partnership will investigate. FAS hasn’t done much research into smart grids, but we see it as an important upgrade in the bigger picture of improving our national energy use, and we’re very interested to see where this partnership will go.
A fact sheet on the partnership can be found here.
On Tuesday, the House of Representatives passed the Comprehensive American Energy Security and Consumer Protection Act (HR 6899). While the bill itself is very wide-reaching, unfortunately the majority of it its focus (and debate) has gotten caught up in the issue of off-shore drilling, an issue that has been shown to have little impact (immediate or long term) on our national energy use and needs.[i] While the bill did pass the house, and now moves to the Senate to be voted on, President Bush has threatened to veto the bill.
Regardless of its unfortunate focus on drilling and its apparent doom by the hand of a presidential veto, the bill does include many positive provisions for efficiency in buildings. The bill also includes the GREEN Act of 2008, a bill sponsored by Rep. Perlmuttter (D-CO), a bill that FAS helped develop. Some of the many important measures included in the bill, along with some thoughts: Continue reading »
In a few days, the International Code Council’s (ICC) final action hearings of the 2009 code development process will take place in Minneapolis. The hearings are the final step in a 3 year long code development cycle aimed at re-evaluating and improving the ICC’s myriad of building codes.
I bring this up because it’s the final determination for what has been deemed as the “30 percent solution” by the Energy Efficient Codes Coalition (EECC) to be adopted into the International Energy Conservation Code (IECC), the nationally recognized model energy efficiency code. The proposals included in this “30 percent solution” look to improve the energy efficiency of the entire code by 30 percent by using current, everyday products and practices that are affordable (paying dividends through positive cash flow for the homeowner).
This lengthy process began in 2007 with the submission of over 150 proposed amendments, which have been revised to incorporate comments and recommendations throughout the development process. The result is a set of 21 individual proposals - fourteen of which were approved by the Development Committee in Palm Springs, with modifications as appropriate, and seven other proposals which were initially not approved but have now been modified by the EECC in its public comments. One of these, EC-14 is a compilation of all the individual parts and would essentially revise the entire code, and another (EC-154) is a voluntary appendix, designed to provide jurisdictions interested in increasing their energy efficiency beyond the basic IECC measures with a means to do so.
The product of this “Final Action Hearing” will become the 2009 IECC, which can then be