The U.S. Defense Department is pursuing energy efficiency and other measures to lower its energy bill and increase its energy security, officials told the U.S. House Armed Services Committee in late March. The department spends $4 billion a year on energy, Dorothy Robyn, deputy undersecretary of defense for installations and environment, testified at the hearing on planned energy investments. DOD operates more than 300,000 buildings, which have an environmental footprint six times greater than the General Services Administration and three times larger than Walmart, Robyn said.
The first installment in this series introduces the collaborative tablet engineering experiment, and it establishes a roadmap for exploration of the tablet’s potential contribution to enhancing and streamlining our collective engineering endeavors.
The day (or the thing that needs fixing, or the deadline, or the design) right in front of us is often more than sufficient for taking all our attention.
I have a pet peeve with HVAC design engineers who do not put enough thought into a project’s contract document specification for training the client’s operation and maintenance personnel.
In discussing the design engineering of equipment rooms, we have already touched on chiller rooms and boiler rooms, so this month we will address air handling equipment rooms.
Last month, I introduced the importance of providing building-specific training to outside service contractors when a building owner does not have or does not intend to hire in-house O&M staff.
Let a scientist with experience both at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and on the manufacturer side discuss the possibilities of a newer dehumidification technology within the framework of the same old moisture challenges.
In the summer, conventional air-conditioning systems in buildings are challenged to meet peak humidity loads. Over time, buildings have reduced their heat (sensible) load, but have done less to reduce their moisture (latent) load. As a result, this moisture load can become too large for conventional air-conditioning systems to handle.
Here is a good idea for a frustrated HVAC person who likes to dabble with computer technology. It seems to me that now just about everyone (except me) uses a handheld device of some kind and is drawn to endless hours of using it analogous to drawing a moth to a flame to its screen.