The Energy and Efficiency Institute at UC Davis is developing the Empower Procurement Product Evaluation Hub to evaluate selected DER products in a rigorous and transparent manner, and to disseminate widely evaluation results to large commercial and institutional customers that use a formal procurement process
Advanced Thermostat Evaluation (Cal-EPE HUB Project)Read More »
This project aims to assist operators during challenging and rare grid events through novel decision support tools and improved, data-driven training. This project will build advanced, machine learning based tools to fit into an adaptive human-machine system and improve existing training simulators to incorporate such tools and more data.
Advancing Cognitive Performance for Power Grid ResiliencyRead More »
This national initiative focused on the creation of good-paying middle-class jobs in advanced energy-economic clusters. For the project, student researchers at Berkeley in public policy, engineering, business and law worked with university partners and industry allies in twenty-four states. The research teams identified bottom-up solutions for local and state governments to build their clean energy economies.
This project developed a new low-cost air-flow sensor, or anemometer, to identify the actual flow of air in rooms and in ducts. These anemometers can assist in early detection of operational issues and can help optimize the performance to improve comfort and reduce energy. If successfully commercialized and installed, these anemometers have the potential to reduce the energy use of almost all commercial HVAC systems in California.
CIEE and partners Power Standards Lab and Lawrence Berkeley National Lab developed a new instrument called a micro-phasor measurement unit (μPMU) to make ultra-precise, time-synchronized measurements in electric power distribution systems. These synchrophasor data provide unique information about power flows and stability of the grid, by revealing magnitudes and phase angles (i.e, subtle time shifts between the measurements at different locations) of voltage and current. The project also created a powerful and extremely fast new tool called the Berkeley Tree Database (BTrDB), to enable users to actually consume and analyze rich data streams like those from μPMUs, which report measurements 120 times per second.
ARPA-E Micro-Synchrophasors for Distribution SystemsRead More »
This project aims to develop a nascent open-source common data model, Brick, into a demonstrated and tested tool that, through the implementation of advanced algorithms and analysis, can enable the scaling of major energy savings, improved building performance, and grid responsiveness across commercial buildings at low cost.
Brick: Portable Analytics, Modeling & Controls in BuildingsRead More »
This national collaborative promotes state-of-the-art building technician education in managing building systems and energy use. The Center provides model curricula, professional development for instructors, career pathways for students & career-changers, and dissemination of research to advance building technician education for sustainable building performance.
Building Efficiency for a Sustainable Tomorrow (BEST) CenterRead More »
Leveraging diverse expertise throughout the state, the Fifth Assessment will contribute to the scientific foundation for understanding climate-related vulnerability throughout California. It will support on-the-ground implementation and decision-making at the local, regional, tribal, and state levels, focusing on the needs of communities most vulnerable to climate change impacts. CIEE is assisting the state with the selection, project management and administration of the core climate research studies.
California’s Fifth Climate Change Assessment – Core Climate ResearchRead More »
CIEE managed two expansive studies of California’s vulnerability to climate change involving dozens of principal investigators at multiple UC campuses and other institutions. The goal was to give planners, public-health officials, land-use managers, and others the research-backed basis they need to develop strategies to adapt to the impacts of climate change.
California’s Third and Fourth Climate Change AssessmentsRead More »
This multi-disciplinary UC Berkeley-led research collaboration is Changing the Rules focusing on building occupants rather than rigid engineering of building environments to be consistent with comfort “norms”. The research project aims to integrate new information technologies into innovative, occupant-responsive control systems building heating, ventilation, and air-conditioning (HVAC) controls, employing improved sensing and new capabilities for information feedback among the building, its operators, and its occupants.
Changing the Rules: Innovative Low-Energy Occupant-Responsive HVAC Controls & SystemsRead More »
This research project sought to advance the incorporation of natural and working lands use and management into California’s climate change mitigation strategy.
The more we understand our own contributions to greenhouse-gas emissions, the better we can act to reduce them. The CoolClimate Carbon-Footprint Calculator shows us how we are doing, and how we can to do better.
This project will demonstrate how hospitals can cost-effectively reduce carbon emissions using heat recovery chiller retrofits, and apply these findings to other existing large commercial buildings.
Decarbonizing Large Commercial Buildings Through Heat Recovery and StorageRead More »
Since 2015 CIEE has been assisting the California Public Utilities Commission in the analysis of the potential for demand response (DR) in California. As part of a continuing effort, CIEE is now managing a $5,000,000 prime contract. CIEE’s primary role is to identify and subcontract with researchers who can perform the work needed by the CPUC.
In 1993 the California Energy Commission founded the Demand Response Research Center (DRRC) at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Its purpose was to develop ways to reduce electricity demand in response to price, monetary incentives, or utility directives to maintain reliable electric service or avoid high electricity prices.
The University of California (UC) system has committed to reducing its net GHGs to 1990 levels by 2020 (all scopes), and to zero by 2025 under its Carbon Neutrality Initiative (scopes 1 & 2). UC campuses are reducing their direct emissions using all affordable strategies, and also anticipate needing to procure offsets to get all the way to zero. The purpose of this project is to develop UC’s strategy for procuring offsets that are high quality, support scalable climate solutions, and fulfill the University’s research, education, and public service missions.
Developing University of California’s Carbon Offset Procurement StrategyRead More »
The Hamilton project will create a low-cost sensor that is securely integrated with building Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC), lighting, plugloads, as well as connected to the grid, will enable many kinds of applications (e.g., diagnostics, demand response) that will reduce energy consumption and improve occupant comfort and satisfaction.
The primary goal of this project was to demonstrate and characterize the energy savings potential, cost effectiveness and cooking performance of high-efficiency equipment as compared to baseline equipment at five different commercial food service sites.
This project studied the integration of “smart” ceiling fans with advanced thermostats along side existing HVAC systems through both laboratory testing and demonstration pilots at affordable multifamily housing sites.
Behavioral adaptations enabled through optimized settings and advanced algorithms is the easiest and possibly most cost-effective method to address HVAC energy use. A low-cost HVAC controller with a very simple user interface (UI) that understands occupant comfort preferences and manages indoor conditions to optimize energy use, without requiring connection to the Internet, could overcome the economic and technology barriers.
Intelligent HVAC Controls for Low Income HouseholdsRead More »
This project aims to overcome barriers to mainstreaming personal comfort devices in commercial buildings to improve comfort, save energy, and provide resilience.
Mainstreaming Personal Comfort Devices with Modular ControlsRead More »
The goal of the EcoBlock research project is to explore strategies for resilience and the rapid, equitable, and affordable reduction of greenhouse gas emissions through urban block-scale retrofitting.
This interdisciplinary eXtensible Building Operating System–Vehicles (XBOS-V) project focused on controlling plug-in electric vehicle charging at residential and small commercial settings using a novel and flexible open-source, open-architecture charge communication and control platform.
Phasor-Based Control (PBC) is a radically new layered control framework for managing high penetrations of solar and other variable energy resources on electric utility distribution circuits. This project integrates several threads of research and development including high-precision micro-synchrophasor (µPMU) measurements, analytics relating phasor profiles to dynamic and unbalanced power flows, decentralized adaptive control algorithms, and simulation capabilities to effectively characterize large networks.
Phasor-Based Control for Scalable Solar PV IntegrationRead More »
This project is a multi-tiered incentives program for contractors in California who are dedicated to providing quality installation, maintenance, and advancing energy-efficient technologies in the residential HVAC industry.
Natural gas combustion to serve space heating hot water systems causes approximately one-third of large commercial building energy use in California. This project evaluated an innovative set of non-proprietary, cost-effective methods to reduce energy consumption and associated emissions from these systems. The project demonstrated 70% natural gas savings and substantial electricity savings in two large office buildings, yielding total utility cost savings of approximately $110,000 (or $0.5/ft²) per year.
Reducing Gas Consumption in Existing Large Commercial BuildingsRead More »
The State Partnership for Energy Efficient Demonstrations (SPEED) program sought to drive the market adoption of energy efficient technologies as a part of California’s commitment to a clean energy future. Managed through the California Institute for Energy and Environment (CIEE) from 2004 to 2014, SPEED was highly successful in conducting more than 100 demonstrations and other technology-transfer projects to showcase the benefits of best-in-class technology solutions in installations across the state.
State Partnership for Energy Efficient Demonstrations (SPEED)Read More »
The project supports the goals of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), which includes working in areas such as energy efficiency, energy storage, economic analysis, behavioral studies, and lifecycle analysis.
Sustainable Systems for Energy: Efficiency, Storage, and Behavioral ApproachesRead More »
The Binational Lab on Smart Energy Management and Technology is a research partnership between Mexico’s largest and most prestigious private education institute, Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (Tec de Monterrey), and California’s UC Berkeley.
The Binational Lab on Smart Energy Management and TechnologyRead More »
The overarching goal of WESTCARB was to facilitate successful, commercial-scale, carbon capture, utilization, and geologic storage (CCUS) development within the WESTCARB region (California, Nevada, Arizona, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Hawaii, and the province of British Columbia) by expanding and enhancing regional characterization through research and development to identify and address CCUS implementation issues.
West Coast Regional Carbon Sequestration Partnership (WESTCARB)Read More »
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