Goodway Presents: Innovation Poised To Positively Impact Our Industry
Once again, Goodway and Just Venting are pleased to present information which will help to educate and inform our valued readers. According to the consulting firm Pike Research, in the next 5 years, the HVAC industry will see a significant and continuing emphasis on energy management. As noted in an executive summary of the report, rising energy prices and increasing pressure to reduce greenhouse gas emissions are driving many building owners to manage energy as an asset rather than treating it as a fixed cost.
According to Pike, until recently, the largest single energy cost in most buildings had been lighting. But a concerted focus on reducing lighting costs, coupled with technological innovations, has driven down lighting costs to the point where HVAC has replaced it as the largest building management cost item.
The Department of Energy puts expenses for HVAC at roughly 32% and lighting next at 25%. Since it is a maxim that activity follows the money, that same process of technological innovation, according to the Pike study, is now shifting its focus to HVAC.
The report summary notes that purchase decision-making in the HVAC industry tends to favor low up-front costs and short returns on investment, and that design preferences tend to run toward systems comprised of traditional components put together in traditional ways. This economic environment has led to slow rates of innovation in rooftop units (RTUs), the preferred system design for most of the industry.
But fear not, for there is much innovation in the pipeline – and you can expect it to start showing up on rooftops and in buildings within the next five years:
Building Energy Management Systems (BEMs) have become increasingly popular over the last ten years because they offer short payback periods (1-3 years) and utilize existing components and systems.
Look for BEMs to increase in popularity while becoming more integrated with building systems and more completely optimized for various building types, sizes and uses.
Ice-Based Thermal Energy Storage (TES) will enter the mainstream in the next five years as a way to address peak-load deficiencies in the national electric grid. While in the next five years TES will mostly be a tool used by utilities, smaller individual, building-sized systems are already hitting the market.
Sure, putting a giant pile of ice on top of a building to cool it off seems a bit of a throwback, but the economics of producing the ice during the lower-utility-cost night and using the latent energy to cool a building during the day make increasing sense.
Look for displacement ventilation to become more popular, although it will most likely see its greatest market penetration in new construction and retrofits to K- 12 schools. Because it simply takes advantage of convection currents, displacement ventilation can be achieved through many existing duct-based systems, and offers the additional benefits of improved indoor air quality (IAQ) and greater occupant comfort.
Another technology you can expect to become increasingly available are (relatively) compact “plug-and-play” absorption (with a “b”) and adsorption (with a”d”) chillers bundled together with solar thermal panels, waste heat rejection and thermal storage. These technologies, while they do meet the market-acceptance criteria of conventional design and quick return on investment, are still early in their growth curves, and significant market acceptance is likely more than five years out.
Chilled beams and raised floors are two other technologies likely to see additional growth in the coming years, according to Pike. Chilled beams are essentially what their name says – ceiling beams with cool water piped through them. Warm air rising from below comes in contact with the beam, is cooled and falls in a classic convection cycle. While chilled beams can be more expensive to install, they offer savings in energy costs due to reduced fan usage.
Raised floors, while they have been around for a longer time than chilled beams, are also now increasing in popularity. Raised access flooring with under-floor air distribution, however, is a challenging retrofit; it is generally best designed into a building at the beginning, so Pike’s research suggests that of the two technologies, chilled beams will likely enjoy more market acceptance.
These technologies are just the first wave of innovation washing up on the shores of our industry. But as the economics become apparent, you can look for them to become a tidal wave of innovation and change.
Rich Silverman
Goodway Blogging Team
Public Domain image by P199 courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
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