David Lehrer July 15, 2024
This spring CBE’s research team was thrilled to learn we had won two major funding awards from the California Energy Commission. These winning proposals were led by the California Institute for Energy and Environment (CIEE) who will lead the future work in close collaboration with CBE researchers and other contributors. Both projects are multi-year efforts, each with a wide range of research activities and deliverables, and leverage CBE’s collective knowledge, capabilities and our extensive network of industry and academic partners.
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Centerline Team February 13, 2020
CBE recently launched an online tool for designing with ceiling fans, making it easier for designers to create highly energy efficient and comfortable spaces. The tool was created based on years of research that have demonstrated that ceiling fans can keep a person cool while using only a fraction of the energy required by air conditioning.
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Gail Brager September 12, 2019
Building standards and conventional practice are all about ’reducing the negative‘ — but what if the goal is to ’enhance the positive‘ instead? Aiming to create environments that are not only comfortable and healthy, but are connected to nature, provide a sense of place, and are a delight to be in. Designing for experience requires us to embrace a broader view of experiential aesthetics, going beyond the primacy of vision to recognize broader sensual qualities that contribute to the beauty and memorability of space.
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David Lehrer May 15, 2019
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the publication of a seminal paper from Rocky Mountain Institute, “Greening the Building and the Bottom Line,” making the case that green buildings’ unique features may improve employee productivity. Since then interest in this topic has remained strong, and several studies by CBE and others have contributed to our collective understanding of workplace productivity; in this post we describe our related work with a focus on key variables.
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David Lehrer April 17, 2019
This spring CBE’s research team received funding to support two new projects that will create new ways to gather, analyze and monetize data from commercial buildings, yielding energy cost savings and more comfort for building users.
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Centerline Team October 15, 2018
Now in its twelfth year, the Livable Buildings Award recognizes projects that demonstrate high occupant satisfaction, excellent design, and innovative operation strategies. This year, we are pleased to announce the Rocky Mountain Institute Innovation Center as the top winner, with an honorable mention for the Pomona College Seaver Laboratory and Andrew Science Hall.
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Centerline Team September 20, 2018
Project Scientist Fred Bauman recently received the ASHRAE Fellow award, a recognition for those who have distinguished themselves in the HVAC industry. His contributions are based on the extensive research on UFAD that he directed at CBE, leading to deeper knowledge and guidance for these advanced HVAC systems. Recently, he has led a similar efforts to address thermally massive radiant systems.
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David Lehrer March 14, 2018
The emerging trend toward smart electric vehicles is creating new opportunities for synergistic innovations that are applicable to both buildings and cars. Model-based control concepts, greatly advanced by the automotive sector, are now being tested in the control of complex commercial buildings. These synergies, what we might call the building-automotive nexus, are also reflected in CBE’s body of research on thermal comfort.
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Centerline Team November 28, 2017
CBE’s research team recently completed a project with goals of making buildings occupant-responsive in real time, and addressing outdated rules-of-thumb that lead to poor energy performance and occupant comfort. Findings demonstrated that “personal comfort” chairs led to comfort satisfaction for nearly all test subjects. The project team also developed and tested innovative HVAC control methods offering significant energy saving potential.
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