advances
| low-energy developments
ASHRAE Speakers Call for net-Zero Action
By CoLLin ToMB

The American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) in March declared itself an agent of change on energy and climate issues. Opening the conference “ Countdown to a Sustainable Energy Future: Net-Zero and Beyond” in San Francisco, ASHRAE President Bill Harrison spoke of the immediacy of climate change. He tempered his sobering remarks by saying, “At least in buildings, we know what to do.”

Several speakers called for the United States to quickly reduce our per-capita carbon emissions from 14 metric tons annually to as low as 1 ton. As the building industry’s source of standards, codes and hard numbers, ASHRAE has great traction, and it intends to use it.

Several themes emerged from the sessions:

• At least four different definitions exist for the concept of net-zero. ASHRAE itself uses a net-zero site energy definition.

• We must standardize design integration. Each building’s systems must be seen as a whole. Success

requires full and early commitment of designers, owners and operators to the low-energy goal.

• Measurement and verification is critical, and our current M & V knowledge base is shallow.

• There is a gulf between “as-designed” and “ as-built” energy use. It can be bridged through better modeling tools and earlier systems design.

• Occupant behavior can turn a potential net-zero building into an energy hog. Designers must engage end users and design systems that are simple to understand and operate.

• Policy and regulation will be essential to making emissions goals. Builders and engineers have resisted change, in part, because they fear liability. They will change when emissions become a liability. Performance standards are often viewed as easier to comply with than prescriptive standards.

• We will need unprecedented collaboration among owners, architects, engineers, utilities and policymakers to achieve the emissions goals taking shape in Washington and worldwide.

• California’s utilities are increasingly active

in demand-side management, and the state’s progressive policies now look beyond Title 24, the section of California code that outlines energy-efficiency standards.

In closing, Kent Peterson of P2S Engineering, the new chair of the ASHRAE 189.1 development committee, said, “Never, ever underestimate what it takes to change an industry. We’re going to need regulatory work to convince some of these people to change.”

Collin Tomb is an architect and writer in Boulder, Colo.

Suntech Pluto Cells Achieve 18 Percent

Efficiency

Suntech announced in March that it’s routinely achieving conversion efficiencies of up to 19 percent with monocrystalline photovoltaic cells and 17 percent with multicrystalline cells, in large-scale production, by using the Pluto anti-reflective technology developed at the University of New South Wales.

Independent testing at the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems in Germany confirmed 18. 8 percent conversion efficiency for a monocrystalline Pluto PV cell, and 17. 2 percent for a multicrystalline cell. Both cells came from Suntech’s 34-megawatt (MW) Pluto production line.

Stuart Wenham, Suntech’s chief technology officer, noted that this performance compares to 16. 5 percent and 15. 5 percent, respectively, using conventional screen-printed surface technology.

www.solmetric.com

12 June 2009 SOLAR TODAY solartoday.org

PV Plant to Power Nation’s
First All-Solar City

In March, Florida Power & Light (FPL) announced plans to build a $400 million, 75-megawatt photovoltaic (PV) array near Fort Myers, Fla. It would be the biggest PV installation in the world.

In April, real estate developer Syd Kitson unveiled plans to feed FPL’s PV output into a smart grid for the nation’s first solar-powered city. His $2 billion Babcock Ranch project would build 19,500 new homes, all certified by the Florida Green Building Coalition. Six million square feet of residential, industrial and retail space would provide about 20,000 permanent jobs.