Document Library
NBI managed the Market Connections component of PIER’s Advanced Automated HVAC Fault Detection and Diagnostics Commercialization Program. This Program resulted in several commercially available FDD tools including the Sentinel from Field Diagnostic Services and Enforma Diagnostics from Architectural Energy Corporation. In addition, the Advanced Rooftop Unit project has been adopted by the Consortium for Energy Efficiency (CEE) as a priority activity. This presentation serves as an introduction to various FDD tools.
NBI completed a report on the range of evaporative, evaporative hybrid and evaporative condensing technologies for HVAC applications on behalf of Southern California Edison including: technologies, manufacturers, market applications and adoption factors surrounding evaporative approaches to cooling.
NBI has developed a market-friendly Building Performance Review protocol that offers access to meaningful feedback on performance can lead to improvements in commerical buildings. The protocol starts with a Level 1 overview based on a simple survey of occupants, analysis of energy bills, and an interview with the facility manager and results in this report.
This document presents a list of product features that will define an Advanced Packaged Rooftop Unit (ARTU). Existing rooftop units have documented problems but by combining the expertise of the members of the project’s Technical Advisory Group and the research team, and with the funding provided by the California Energy Commission, we can help solve many of these problems. We further believe that we can identify particular “features” that an ARTU should have, and that incorporating these features in a demonstration rooftop unit would provide value to the manufacturing, contracting, utility and energy communities.
The Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance funded NBI's initial feasibility investigation for this protocol. The report contains a basic outline for a self-reported review. Since that time we have tested a pilot version in a large Seattle-area school district. Owners interested in feedback on their buildings, should contact Cathy Turner at NBI.
This report, prepared for the Northwest Power and Conservation Council, presents the aggregated results of four recent investigations into the efficiency and operational problems of packaged rooftop heating, ventilation and air conditioning units (RTU) and suggests recommendations for programmatic approaches to capture RTU savings potential.
This study expands and validates previous research by Heschong Mahone Group that found a statistical correlation between the amount of daylight in elementary school classrooms and the performance of students on standardized math and reading tests.
This study presents evidence that a chain retailer is experiencing higher sales in daylit stores than in similar non-daylit stores.The study included 73 store locations in California, of which 24 stores were daylit primarily by diffusing skylights.
This study investigates whether daylight and other aspects of the indoor environment in elementary school student classrooms have an effect on student learning, as measured by their improvement on standardized math and reading tests over an academic year. The study uses regression analysis to compare the performance of over 8000 3rd through 6th grade students in 450 classrooms in the Fresno Unified School District,located in California’s Central Valley. Statistical models were used to examine the relationship between elementary students’ test improvement and the presence of daylight in their classrooms, while controlling for traditional education explanatory variables, such as student and teacher demographic characteristics.
This study reports on a statistical investigation into the influences indoor physical environment has on office worker performance, especially daylight and view, and secondarily ventilation and thermal comfort. Two different studies were conducted at the same organization, the Sacramento Municipal Utility District. The first study looked at 100 workers in an incoming call center, whose performance was continuously tracked by a computer system and measured in terms of time to handle each call. The second “Desktop” study examined the performance of 200 other office workers on a series of short cognitive assessment tests, taken at each individual's desktop computer.
The studies have shown that indoor environmental conditions can have a measurable relationship to changes in office worker performance and have established a range of likely effect sizes that other researchers can use to refine the needs of future studies.