Jul 27 2010
The Fraunhofer Center for Sustainable Energy Systems (Fraunhofer CSE) today announced that it was selected to serve as a Research Team Leader for the Building America Program.
Building America, an industry-driven research program sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy, aims to accelerate the development and adoption of advanced building energy technologies in new and existing homes. Fraunhofer CSE’s team of scientists will focus on applying new technologies to dramatically increase the scale and depth of home energy efficiency retrofits. Specific residential projects in Massachusetts, Texas and Maine will be announced near the end of this year.
“I am delighted that the Fraunhofer-led team has been selected as a Building America Team. This is a testament to our expertise and growing reputation in building energy efficiency research and development,” said Kurt Roth, Ph.D., leader of the Building Energy Efficiency Group at CSE. “We have assembled a very talented group with the capability to achieve ambitious goals through applied research and development of energy-efficient building technologies and systems.”
In a 2009 report, the U.S. Department of Energy estimated that buildings consume almost 40% of America's energy and 73% of its electricity, making the development and deployment of energy-efficient, durable and comfortable building technologies vital to meeting energy- and carbon-reduction goals over the coming decades. For these reasons, the Fraunhofer CSE Building Energy Efficiency Group works with partners from across the buildings sector to investigate, develop, test, model and demonstrate energy-efficient technologies. The retrofit market holds particular interest to the Group’s research goals, as it offers the greatest opportunity to achieve significant reductions in building energy consumption in the near-term.
“Fraunhofer takes a holistic approach to energy retrofits to achieve significant primary energy savings at scale,” added Roth. “We look at all aspects of the building - from enhanced building envelope retrofits and advanced controls measures, to the integration of solar technologies with HVAC and water heating, as well as monitoring and performance evaluation of these technologies. We also study how occupants interact with the building and how their decisions impact energy consumption.”
Source: http://www.fraunhofer.org/