The program consisted of five major research elements:

• Automated Commissioning and Diagnostics to ensure efficient building operation and quality indoor environments
• Advanced Load Management and Controls to save energy and manage peak loads from buildings
• Alternative Cooling Technologies to reduce or eliminate electric consumption for cooling
• Alternative Construction Techniques and Technologies to improve the efficiency and cost effectiveness of California’s buildings
• Technology Assessment to target the research by determining impacts of and barriers to new technologies in California buildings, climates, and markets.

The research program investigated the energy efficiency of buildings and develop and demonstrate technologies to improve energy efficiency. These technologies will address such issues as peak electrical demand, the need for better indoor environments, and the need to make California’s commercial buildings and residential homes more affordable.

The research directly provided science and technology solutions that address a number of key PIER program issues:

• Issue #1 - Energy consumption is rapidly increasing in hotter, inland areas as new building construction increases in these areas.
• Issue #2 - Development of energy efficient products and services needs to adequately consider non-energy benefits, such as comfort, productivity, durability, and decreased maintenance.
• Issue #3 - Building design, construction, and operation of energy-related features can affect public health and safety.
• Issue #4 - Investments in energy efficiency can affect building and housing affordability and value, and the state’s economy.

The research program had five technical elements consisting of 17 research projects and an assessment project. Each technical program element was designed to provide a consistent and logical approach with scientific, technological, and market-oriented solutions. Carefully designed cross linkages among the program elements maximize the synergy within the entire program.

The core of the program consisted of the four technology development elements illustrated below.

Program Elements Individually and Collectively Support the Program's Goal

The prime thrust of the AEC team’s program was to develop and demonstrate science and technology solutions that are targeted to achieve a high impact on the energy efficiency in California’s existing and future building and housing stock. To realize high, sustainable energy-efficiency, health, and affordability impacts for California, the program consisted of a portfolio of projects that were at different stages in their RD&D evolution. This approach strikes a balance between technology

• assessment to determine the market needs for a new technology, the characteristics the technology must possess to meet those needs, and the technical and market barriers to the realization of the its potential
• development in which a technological concept is proven and formalized as a method or technique
• implementation that encapsulates a technical concept in the form of a tool (software, standards, guidelines), product or service that is ready to be tested and demonstrated in actual buildings
• demonstration that tests the performance and utility of a new tool, product, or service under "real world" conditions. The result of a demonstration project is a clear scientific assessment of the performance of a product or service data being collected during the demonstration period.

These four stages of RD&D form the sections of a "pipeline" for delivering new technology to the marketplace. As illustrated below, market research (an aspect of assessment) feeds information to the development and implementation stages, which in turn supply demonstrable technologies for deployment and demonstration. Product assessments are essential so that knowledge gained from demonstrations is used to improve tools, products, and services and ensure their commercial success. While a feedback loop returns information to future developments (illustrated as the light blue path), the result is a suite of commercially viable products, services, and technologies.

Also illustrated above, in parallel with the RD&D path, are educational and market-transformation activities designed to condition the market for these new products and services. These also use assessments of markets and products as key sources of intelligence about what the marketplace needs, wants, will support and what impediments exist to market acceptance. The AEC research team sought guidance regarding market acceptance of the targeted techologies through quarterly meetings with the Program Advisory Committee (PAC). The PAC members were independent experts in fields of research undertaken in the Program as well as end users of the research products and energy policy makers. The PAC provided pathways to related market-research, market-transformation, and product-assessment activities conducted by other institutions.

Our program’s portfolio of projects provided a balance among the stages of the technology pipeline, providing for development of new ideas in energy-efficiency concepts to be investigated while, at the same time, using collaboration with industry to test and demonstrate innovative technology in the near term and move it quickly to the market. This balance in the program portfolio was designed to be responsive to the Commission’s need to achieve both short-term and long-term energy-efficiency impacts. Our demonstration projects provided short-term results that could be leveraged in ensuing market-transformation activities sponsored through CBEE energy-efficiency and market-transformation programs. The technology development and implementation projects yielded longer-term products by working with industrial partners to keep the pipeline primed with new technologies. The assessment program element provided guidance for technologies already approaching market readiness while also benefiting new technologies with a better understanding of what is required of them to succeed.

Back to top