News

Mary Ann Piette, whose research has been foundational to improving energy efficiency of existing buildings and integrating flexible building technologies with the electric grid, has been appointed Associate Laboratory Director (ALD) of the Energy Technologies Area (ETA). The appointment, which took effect August 2, follows a national search. Piette has served as the interim ALD of ETA since... Read more

Researchers are hard at work on ways to make buildings more energy-efficient and user-friendly as part of net zero carbon emissions energy systems. That means things like windows and walls that take advantage of nature to heat and cool, better batteries to store and deliver energy when needed, and systems that can adapt to changes from the electrical grid. What would it look like to combine all of... Read more

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) recently hosted a summit to showcase the benefits of vacuum insulated glazing (VIG) — a type of highly insulated window glazing that utilizes a vacuum as an insulating layer between window panes — and the likely challenges preventing its widespread adoption on the market. A wide cross-section of stakeholders was present at the summit,... Read more

When it comes to energy efficiency in California buildings, windows are a weak link. About half of the state’s homes still have inadequate, single-pane windows. A significant portion of these homes are in communities throughout the state that may have more vulnerable populations. Windows pose a key opportunity both to reduce carbon emissions from California’s buildings and to boost energy... Read more

Smart fenestration systems such as automated shades or smart windows can autonomously manage glare and solar heat gains which not only reduces electricity bills by up to 30% while cutting peak demand in half, but also improves the health and well-being of occupants. Now, Berkeley Lab researchers have launched a key component for making these systems easier to install in buildings. That key... Read more

Windows make up 7% of the envelope area of a home but can account for 47% of the envelope heat loss. High-performance windows thus represent a significant opportunity for consumers to be more comfortable and save money – and help reduce energy demand and greenhouse gas emissions while doing so. Now Berkeley Lab is teaming up with the Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA), the Pacific... Read more

After several years of a research and development relationship, one of the largest window and door replacement companies in the U.S. announced the national launch of a new high-performance glass option for select replacement windows. The new glass option offers a “thin-glass” triple-pane glazing element that makes the window five times more insulating than a single-pane window, based upon a... Read more

Researchers from the windows group have developed, in partnership with colleagues at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the California Institute for Energy and the Environment, an analysis of the research that is needed for facades and lighting systems to better work in concert to reduce energy use and increase comfort for building occupants.A workshop with a diverse group of stakeholders,... Read more

A grant of nearly $2 million was recently awarded to install energy-saving, thin-glass triple-pane windows in low-income communities in California. Thanks to years of investment and support from the California Energy Commission (CEC) and the Department of Energy (DOE), this project will work with industry partners to deploy superior windows in California homes. Windows are often referred to as the... Read more

The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Technology Commercialization Fund has awarded $1 million to four projects from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (Berkeley Lab) to further collaborative research with industry partners on biofuels, bioproducts, energy microgrid technology, and renewable energy technology.Two of those projects are from Berkeley Lab’s Energy Technologies Area: Expand Access to... Read more

Smart windows that track the position of the sun and automatically dim to block out glare and heat sound futuristic, but many architects and engineers are already starting to integrate them into the design of new homes and commercial buildings. San Francisco International Airport, for example, is installing one of the largest dynamic window installations in an airport in the world. Researchers... Read more

A leading energy efficiency group recently highlighted research from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (Berkeley Lab) as part of a blog post about new in-store labels for window coverings. The labels for attachments such as blinds and shades are informed by a product rating and certification program developed via extensive modeling and research at Berkeley Lab. The text from the American Council for... Read more

After serving four years as Berkeley Lab's Associate Director for Energy Technologies, Ramamoorthy Ramesh will be returning to his research in ultra low-power electronics while also helping to lead a major Berkeley Lab research initiative in next-generation, energy-efficient microelectronics.This new initiative has been dubbed "Beyond Moore's Law," as it seeks the solution to what will happen when... Read more

Ravi Prasher has been appointed Associate Laboratory Director for Energy Technologies at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). The announcement follows an international search.Prasher, an internationally renowned scientist in the field of thermal energy science and technologies, has been director of Berkeley Lab's Energy Storage and Distributed Resources... Read more

About $20 billion worth of energy leaks out of windows in the United States each winter – and that’s with double-paned insulating windows installed on a majority of buildings. The Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) is now working with manufacturers to bring to market a “super window” that is at least twice as insulating as 99 percent of the... Read more

By using advanced lighting and automated shades, scientists from the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) found that occupants on one floor of a high-rise office building in New York City were able to reduce lighting energy usage by nearly 80 percent in some areas.The dramatic results emerged at a "living laboratory" set up to test four sets of technologies... Read more

For the past 40 years, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL) has been partnered with the window industry to help save American consumers money in energy costs by pioneering new energy-efficient windows, design tools, and window-rating systems.The lab worked closely with window manufacturers and the building industry to develop, produce, validate, and deploy energy-saving low-emissivity or "low-E"... Read more

Researchers from the United States and Brazil have developed a new device that can reduce energy losses in buildings by measuring and assessing the energy performance of windows without removing them from their site. The Portable Window Energy Meter, still in prototype stage, was developed by researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and from Brazil’s Federal University of... Read more

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has been awarded more than $4 million by the Department of Energy (DOE) to undertake three projects aimed at improving the energy efficiency of buildings, which account for more than 40 percent of the country's energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions.The projects, all developed in the Lab's Energy Technologies Area (ETA), will help meet... Read more

About 10% of the energy used in U.S. buildings—approximately 4 quads a year—compensates for energy lost through windows. To address this inefficiency, architects, engineers, and home-builders are advocating the use of high-performance windows, which are composed of insulated glass units (IGUs) that combine multiple panes, thin film coatings, and special gas fills between the panes, and... Read more

Low-cost coating would disrupt the building retrofit market and potentially save billions in electricity.It’s estimated that 10 percent of all the energy used in buildings in the U.S. can be attributed to window performance, costing building owners about $50 billion annually, yet the high cost of replacing windows or retrofitting them with an energy efficient coating is a major deterrent. U.S.... Read more

A new website intended to help architects, building engineers, and manufacturers develop and make better use of energy-efficient glazing and façade systems in commercial buildings is now available. Developed by the Windows and Envelope Materials Group of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division (EETD), at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), "Low Energy, High Performance... Read more

Green Light New York and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have partnered to develop a pair of "Living Lab" demonstration projects that will deploy innovative lighting, daylighting and shading systems in working New York City office spaces. The team has secured the participation of two Fortune 100 companies, each of which have committed to using an individual floor of their flagship NYC... Read more

The 40th anniversary of the founding of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division at Berkeley Lab is November 1, 2013.Every Thursday during October, we’ll look back at a significant energy-efficient technology developed by EETD and its research partners.This WeekEETD has developed energy-efficient technologies that are all around you, saving energy in your home and workplace. One of those... Read more

Daylighting is the strategy of admitting light from the sun and sky to reduce use of electric lighting in buildings. Since lighting energy use represents 13 percent of the total primary energy used by buildings in the United States or 5.42 quadrillion Btus in 2010, these technologies can play a significant role towards meeting U.S. and state energy-efficiency and greenhouse gas emission reduction... Read more