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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2023

Carbon Emissions in a Typical New Production Home: A Case Study

This report is intended to serve as a foundational document for residential construction executives and leadership teams to understand how a typical home currently performs relative to building decarbonization goals set for 2030 and 2050. The intent is to help homebuilders benchmark their current performance and better understand the largest sources of carbon emissions in their homes. There is a need to understand and assess current performance against net zero carbon goals to define achievable paths forward. This case study highlights opportunities for innovation and carbon reduction through advanced technologies and material choices.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2023

Carbon Emissions in a Typical New Production Home: A Case Study

This report, prepared by IBACOS, is intended to serve as a foundational document for the residential construction industry to understand how a typical home currently performs relative to building decarbonization goals set for 2030 and 2050. The intent is to help homebuilders benchmark their current performance and better understand the largest sources of carbon emissions in their homes.

Carbon Emissions↗
DOE OSTI2022

Zero Energy Ready Out of the Box

In this conference paper for the ASHRAE Buildings XV conference, December 2022, PNNL staff share key metrics for companies who are combining off site construction with certification to the U.S. Department of Energy’s Zero Energy Ready Home program to create homes that are both cost effective to construct and high performance to live in. Key performance metrics and measures for modular, panelized, and SIP homes are compared against all homes in the DOE Zero Energy Ready Home program and against new homes built to code. These metrics show that off-site construction homes got similar or better energy performance to site-built homes, and in the case of modular and panelized, at considerably lower average cost than site-built homes. The paper also highlights the experiences of two DOE Zero Energy Ready Home builders who employ offsite construction methods. One builder constructs production homes using pre-assembled panels. The other builder designs and ships kit homes all over the United States. The paper will focus on the optimum value engineering aspects of the panelized construction processes used by each builder to identify management and production practices employed by the builders to operate profitably while meeting high energy performance goals, despite a year marked by skyrocketing materials costs and supply chain and labor shortages. Cost and labor savings methods will be discussed in the context of these two unique business models.

U.S. Department of Energy Building Technologies Pr↗
DOE OSTI2023

Analyzing Insider Risk Threat to the Internet of Things (IoT)

Recent technological advancement has created a growing convergence of innovation. From machine learning to ubiquitous computing to wireless networks and automation, the world is seeing new technology increasingly capable of connecting with each other. Devices and systems use open communications networks to interact, process information, and react. This is called the Internet of Things (IoT) and is comprised of physical devices that exchange data over networks, creating revolutionary possibilities. The most common way most people interact with an IoT is through ‘smart home’ products like Amazon’s Alexa, which use microphones, speakers, and phones to control a variety of devices, from lights and thermostats, to cameras, to appliances and vacuum cleaners. But the open nature of IoT networks—necessary for their ability to communicate and operate—also introduces privacy and security concerns. At a personal level, this might mean a hack into a home to steal private information, but when applied in broader industries like healthcare, transportation, manufacturing, or the military, this vulnerability can have serious consequences. As IoT usage and interconnectivity increases, so too does the susceptibility to malicious actors. And the entire system is only as secure as its least secure member. This creates particular risk and vulnerability to radiological material industries, as a competent insider adversary could utilize the IoT to potentially steal or access classified or sensitive information about employees, sites, or systems; or simply sabotage security or maintenance from a more remote—and less secure—device. The IoT relies on a secure network across the entire system, especially in transport which may lack the security of more permanent locations; if one device fails, it can create a ripple effect and an insider threat may seek to exploit that connectivity. While IoT benefits drive increased innovation and usage, there are also vulnerabilities an insider threat could exploit; this risk of an IoT to radiological material must be addressed in any mitigation effort.

Kinney, Justin↗
DOE OSTI2025

DOE Zero Energy Ready Manufactured Housing: Subject Matter Expert Technical Assistance Summary

Manufactured homes offer American consumers an affordable option for decent single-family detached housing. For working-class American families in many U.S. markets, manufactured homes are the first step toward home ownership. They now make up 10% of all new homes constructed in the United States, with higher percentages in the south and in rural communities. To help encourage the production of homes that are more durable, healthy, efficient, and disaster resistant, the U.S. Department of Energy is bringing its building science research to the manufactured housing industry through DOE’s Zero Energy Ready Manufactured Home (ZER-MH) program, which provides technical assistance and voluntary guidelines to manufactured home builders. Homes built to these guidelines are better able to handle power outages and less likely to experience moisture issues, offering a better product option for American families. This higher quality is evidenced by energy modeling which shows homes manufactured to these voluntary guidelines will typically use half the energy of manufactured homes built to the current minimum requirements of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)’s Manufactured Housing and Construction Safety Standard (MHCSS). These homes can also reduce critical energy demand during the busiest hours of the day, typically late afternoon and early evening in the summer when air conditioning demand is highest and mornings in the winter when furnaces and heaters are heating up. Reducing electricity demand during these peak periods when electricity rates are at their highest reduces costs for American families while freeing up capacity on overburdened energy distribution networks. Builders participating in the DOE ZER-MH program are eligible for a tax incentive via the 45L tax credit, which helps to offset the costs of ZER-MH upgrades, enabling builders to offer these certified homes at no additional cost. Together these factors enable manufactured homes to offer home buyers a housing option that is both affordable to finance and affordable to operate, with lower monthly mortgage payments and lower monthly energy bills.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2023

New Residential Construction Carbon Emissions

This fact sheet will help homebuilders better understand the largest sources of carbon emissions in constructed homes and see the comparative impact of those sources on overall emissions. Opportunities are highlighted for innovation and carbon reduction through material choices.

carbon emissions↗
DOE OSTI2024

Moisture Performance of Unvented Attics With Vapor Diffusion Ports and Buried Ducts in Hot, Humid Climates

Energy efficiency measures, such as cool roofs, radiant barriers, interior radiative control coatings, and buried ducts are increasing in popularity and are promoted by energy codes because of their energy-saving potential. However, these strategies can also pose moisture risks in attics by lowering surface temperatures and increasing condensation potential and moisture accumulation. Of particular concern in hot-humid climates is dripping condensation on cold air-conditioning ductwork in the summer - commonly referred to as duct "sweating" - which threatens the attic floor with conditions conducive to mold growth and rot. One strategy to mitigate these moisture issues is to wrap ductwork in thicker duct-wrap insulation with an integrated exterior vapor barrier, but thick duct wrap can be difficult to come by, expensive, and unwieldy to work with. This study explores an alternative strategy of reducing moisture issues while embracing energy efficiency by using unvented attics with vapor diffusion ports and buried ductwork in hot-humid climates. Vapor diffusion ports have been studied so far in a wide range of U.S. climates, mostly in the context of conditioned attics. In this study, the strategy is implemented in the novel context of hot-humid climates with ductwork sitting atop blown-in attic floor insulation in unconditioned attics. Using a combination of field experiments and hygrothermal modeling, the findings of this project indicate that an unvented attic with vapor diffusion ports and buried ducts may be a key part of a successful low-cost method for reducing the attic moisture load by venting excess moisture out of the attic, keeping duct-jacket surfaces above dew point temperature, and keeping the roof deck safe from winter moisture accumulation.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2021

‘Our mission matters’: Detonator Production honors the stars and stripes

At TA-22, home to the Detonator Production (DP) division, elk are a common sight among the trees and grasses. Now, so is Old Glory. More than 18 months ago, COVID-19 forced much of our workforce to change how we do business. Although the transition allowed daily operations to continue, comradery was difficult to maintain while employees worked from home or under modified on-site conditions.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2023

TP84227_FS83049_OPData

The data set represents the data used for the analysis of operational carbon emissions for a carbon case study of a typical production builder's home in two common climate zones, Climate Zone 2 (Warm) and CZ 5 (Cold). A data set for embodied carbon emissions analysis for the same project is in a separate workbook.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2023

TP84227_FS83049_ECData

The data set represents the data used for the analysis of embodied carbon emissions for a carbon case study of a typical production builder's home in two common climate zones, Climate Zone 2 (Warm) and CZ 5 (Cold). A data set for operational carbon emissions analysis for the same project is in a separate workbook.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2023

A Field Study of Nonintrusive Load Monitoring Devices and Implications for Load Disaggregation

Evaluations of nonintrusive load monitoring (NILM) algorithms and technologies have mostly occurred in constrained, artificial environments. However, few field evaluations of NILM products have taken place in actual buildings under normal operating conditions. This paper describes a field evaluation of a state-of-the-art NILM product, tested in eight homes. The match rate metric—a technique recommended by a technical advisory group—was used to measure the NILM’s success in identifying specific loads and the accuracy of the energy consumption estimates. A performance assessment protocol was also developed to address common issues with NILM mislabeling and ground-truth comparisons that have not been sufficiently addressed in past evaluations. The NILM product’s estimates were compared to the submetered consumption of eight major appliances. Overall, the product had good performance in disaggregating the energy consumption of the electric water heaters, which included both electric resistance and heat-pump water heaters, but only a fair accuracy with refrigerators, dryers, and air conditioners. The performance was poor for cooking equipment, furnace fans, clothes washers, and dishwashers. Moreover, the product was often unable to detect major loads in homes. Typically, two or more appliances were not detected in a home. At least two dryers, furnace fans, and air conditioners went undetected across the eight homes. On the other hand, the dishwasher was detected in all homes where available or monitored. The key findings were qualitatively compared to those of past field evaluations. Potential areas for improvement in NILM product performance were determined along with areas where complementary technologies may be able to aid in load-disaggregation applications.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2022

Tracking Volumetric Units in Modular Factories for Automated Progress Monitoring Using Computer Vision

The construction industry is increasingly adopting off-site and prefabricated methods due to advantages offered in safety, quality, and lead time. Applying industrialized methods for plant management in offsite construction factories requires the collection of large volumes of production process data, which is a tedious task when performed manually. Recent attempts to automate this process have relied on sensor-based data collection methods which are susceptible to noise, expensive, and difficult to validate. Computer vision methods, however, enable process data collection from videos without the limitations of the other sensor-based methods. This technology has not been applied for offsite construction except in very few instances and therefore, this study proposes a novel method to reliably collect the production process data using computer vision method in near real-time from widely used surveillance cameras in offsite construction. The proposed method allows the user to annotate the workstations of interest on the video as ground truths and process these areas throughout the entire video to track the units entering and leaving stations, while continuously updating a near real-time schedule of the production line. This framework was validated by implementing on the surveillance videos of the production process of modular home manufacturing in a factory. The results consistently provided 100% accuracy, after denoising, for all the videos processed including 60 h of work for a station. The developed method enables real-time tracking of station performance, which can enable continuous improvement methods for factory management and resource allocation.

computer vision↗
DOE OSTI2025

Comparative life cycle assessment of a modular cross-laminated timber residential building designed for disassembly and reuse versus traditional wood frame construction

There is a need for affordable housing across the U.S., with high-performance modular and prefabricated buildings providing a logical avenue for meeting some of this demand. However, there is a need to balance high performance construction – including low emissions – with affordability. To provide a proof-of-concept in meeting these goals, the Circular Home is a cross-laminated timber (CLT)-based deconstructible and reconfigurable single-family residence that meets high performance targets in moisture, energy, design, economics, and life cycle assessment (LCA). This study focuses on the LCA, presenting a cradle-to-cradle whole-building life cycle assessment (WBLCA) for the Circular Home and a functionally equivalent Baseline Home constructed with traditional materials and methods. The functional unit is 1 m 2 of gross floor area across 60 years. Revit building information models (BIM) provided material quantities and Tally LCA was utilized for impact data (inclusive of biogenic carbon sequestration), supplemented with manufacturer environmental product declarations (EPDs). The Circular Home outperforms the baseline residence in most measured impact categories, including global warming potential (GWP), producing −2.73 kgCO 2 eq/m 2 in embodied emissions, whereas the modeled baseline has an embodied GWP of 428 kgCO 2 eq/m 2 . The careful material selection and advanced building design optimizes performance, with the Circular Home containing only −0.006 times the embodied emissions and −0.02 times the operational emissions of its traditional counterpart. Finally, the unique contribution of this work is in the environmental impact comparison of a high-performance modular CLT structure that can be affordably scaled and mass produced in a U.S. market, compared to typical single family home construction.

Circularity↗
DOE OSTI2021

Adoption of delivery services in light of the COVID pandemic: Who and how long?

A significant growth in demand for online shopping in light of the Coronavirus Disease (COVID) crisis has received attention from transportation practitioners, policy-makers, and researchers. However, an important question arises in this increase in online shopping and resulting deliveries: How long will this last? Very little is known whether this popularity would last a long time. Here, to address this question, the authors conducted a survey of 915 individuals residing in the U.S. and classified them into the four distinctive consumer types (i.e., the prior adopter, temporary adopter and permanent new adopter, and non-adopter) depending on their usage of delivery services before, during, and after (expected) the COVID crisis. This research aims to gain behavioral insight by exploring the differences between the four consumer types and investigating factors affecting the initial adoption and continuance intention of using delivery services. The descriptive analysis revealed that there are clear differences not only between the four types of consumers but also between the four product types (i.e., grocery, food, home goods, and other packages) considered in the survey. The models found that factors affecting the initial adoption and continuance intention are different from the previous studies conducted before the COVID pandemic. Implications for planning and policymaking are also discussed.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Colorado Residential Retrofit Energy District (CoRRED) Phase I: Final Modeling Results

Electrification of buildings and transportation coupled with increased deployment of distributed energy resources (DERs) has been identified as a key step toward meeting emissions reduction goals across the U.S. Examples of pilot projects that feature innovative, 'smart' electric neighborhoods are largely focused on new construction projects, but there is a need to address the millions of existing homes so that they too may accommodate cleaner yet variable energy production in ways that benefit both the utility grid and the homes' residents. The Colorado Residential Retrofit Energy District (CoRRED) project used building and grid co-simulation tools to model an advanced energy district demonstration in an existing residential neighborhood in Denver, Colorado, and explored how existing building and utility infrastructures can be enhanced with combinations of traditional energy-efficiency retrofit measures and integration of solar panels and other DER technologies to provide better affordability and reliability. We analyzed which packages of DERs most reliably enable demand flexibility in response to a time-of-use (TOU) rate. Our results clearly indicate that incorporating DERs into efficient electrification produces much bigger utility bill savings on an annual basis than efficient electrification without DERs. While electrifying a neighborhood will increase the maximum load, batteries and solar panels can reduce load during peak hours so that the community can be a net producer during peak periods. A remaining challenge is to overcome first cost barriers to implementing energy-efficiency and DER technologies, as modest utility bill savings require long payback periods that are not practical for most homeowners.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
DOE OSTI2023

What is Geotherrmal?

Get fast facts about geothermal energy, including a peek at its role in the natural world, home heating and cooling, and power production.

GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2022

Healthy Buildings Guide for Small Businesses: A Quick Reference to Improve Indoor Air Quality (Restaurants Excluded)

Indoor air pollutant concentrations can be higher than those outdoors, putting occupants at risk. These pollutants come from a variety of sources: materials used to build and furnish indoor spaces, retail products and services, and occupants themselves. Ventilation, temperature, and humidity also affect indoor air quality. It is important to consider the documented benefits of healthy indoor environments at any time – not just during a public health crisis – and it is key to consider the indoor air quality where we do business as well as at home. Small businesses vary in size, services, products, ownership style, and building mechanical systems, yet all benefit from healthy indoor spaces for employees and customers. This guide provides steps, in conjunction with public health guidance, that small businesses can take to improve and maintain indoor air quality. Small businesses often have unique ownership structures – the building owner and business owner can be different parties – so this guide addresses both building and business owner action items. There are many ways to pursue healthy indoor air, including eliminating, minimizing, and/or controlling the contaminants we bring in, and removing or diluting any existing contaminants through ventilation, filtration, air cleaning, and/or disinfection. Best results are achieved through a comprehensive approach combining various strategies, including those discussed in this guide.

air filtration↗
DOE OSTI2022

Guia de Edificios Saludables para Pequenas Empresas: Una Referencia Rapida para Mejorar la Calidad del Aire Interior (Restaurantes Excluidos)

Indoor air pollutant concentrations can be higher than those outdoors, putting occupants at risk. These pollutants come from a variety of sources: materials used to build and furnish indoor spaces, retail products and services, and occupants themselves. Ventilation, temperature, and humidity also affect indoor air quality. It is important to consider the documented benefits of healthy indoor environments at any time - not just during a public health crisis - and it is key to consider the indoor air quality where we do business as well as at home. Small businesses vary in size, services, products, ownership style, and building mechanical systems, yet all benefit from healthy indoor spaces for employees and customers. This guide provides steps, in conjunction with public health guidance, that small businesses can take to improve and maintain indoor air quality. Small businesses often have unique ownership structures - the building owner and business owner can be different parties - so this guide addresses both building and business owner action items. There are many ways to pursue healthy indoor air, including eliminating, minimizing, and/or controlling the contaminants we bring in, and removing or diluting any existing contaminants through ventilation, filtration, air cleaning, and/or disinfection. Best results are achieved through a comprehensive approach combining various strategies, including those discussed in this guide.

air filtration↗