News

The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded Honeywell an $11.4 million grant to help Southern California Edison implement automated demand response under OpenADR, the Open Automated Demand Response Communications Specification.... Read more

Scientists at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in cooperation with the International SEMATECH Manufacturing Initiative (ISMI), are releasing for beta testing a computer-based tool to help the world's semiconductor manufacturing facilities ("fabs") evaluate and improve their energy efficiency."We developed FABS21 to allow the operators of semiconductor manufacturing... Read more

Dan Rather Reports, a newsmagazine show airing on HDNet, interviewed Marc Fischer of the Environmental Energy Technologies Division for a segment about reducing greenhouse gas emissions through carbon offsets. Fischer's research focuses on measuring regional emissions of greenhouse gases through direct measurement. The show aired November 11.... Read more

LBNL's OpenADR is a standard to make automated demand response and real-time power pricing quick and easy. Is the fragmented market ready for it?... Read more

LAFAYETTE, CA — Nov. 10, 2009 — Utility Integration Solutions (UISOL), the utility industry business integration specialist, today announced an agreement with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Labs) to develop the Open Automated Demand Response (OpenADR) specification into an open source platform for use in Smart Grid applications.... Read more

The U.S. Senate has approved the nomination of Arun Majumdar, director of the Lab's Environmental Energy Technologies Division and a professor at UC Berkeley, as the first director of the Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). ARPA-E's goals are to create technologies that have the potential to reduce the nation's reliance on foreign energy supplies, reduce... Read more

Researchers at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) released a new study on the installed costs of solar photovoltaic (PV) power systems in the U.S., showing that the average cost of these systems declined by more than 30 percent from 1998 to 2008. Within the last year of this period, costs fell by more than 4 percent.... Read more

An NAS report estimates the hidden costs of energy production and use in 2005 were $120 billion with the single largest expense attributed to health damage from air pollution associated with electricity generation and motor vehicle transportation.... Read more

Berkeley Lab researchers, in partnership with Silicon Valley firms and the California Energy Commission, have three new energy-efficient data center technologies available for demonstration.... Read more

The White House announced its intention to nominate Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California, Berkeley engineer and scientist Arun Majumdar to become the first director of the U.S. Department of Energy's Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E).... Read more

Ashok Gadgil, a scientist in the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), is one of 10 recipients being recognized for their environmental achievements through the 15th annual Heinz Awards, announced today by the Heinz Family Foundation.... Read more

Advanced energy-efficient technologies in lighting, HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning), and control systems are heading for the buildings, laboratories and data centers of several federal agencies. With $1.8 million in funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, experts at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) will provide... Read more

This San Francisco Chronicle article discusses our R&D on building commissioning, and how it can save a commercial building owner millions of dollars in energy costs.... Read more

Several current and former EETD energy efficiency researchers are discussed in this article in the journal Science.... Read more

Smart grid software and hardware technology developed by the Berkeley Lab helped Northern California power utility Pacific Gas and Electric Company and several of its commercial and industrial customers demonstrate that they can reduce power usage automatically and quickly in support of grid reliability. This approach is sometimes called Fast-DR (fast demand response).... Read more

Berkeley Lab and China's Tsinghua University forged ties on August 12 to promote the development and implementation of building energy efficiency, a move intended to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. and China.... Read more

Ashok Gadgil and Javier Fernández-Han first met in 2003, when Gadgil showed the young Javier a model of his UV Waterworks. They met again recently, after Javier took first place in the "Invent Your World 2009" contest.... Read more

The 2008 edition of the "Wind Technologies Market Report" provides a comprehensive overview of developments in the rapidly evolving U.S. wind power market. The need for such a report has become apparent in the past few years, as the wind power industry has entered an era of unprecedented growth, both globally and in the United States.... Read more

Two companies nominated by the Demand Response Research Center received a Buildy Award at the recent Connectivity Week meeting in San Jose. The nomination of Powerit Solutions was based in the company's successful integration of the OpenADR communication infrastructure and enabling automated demand response (Auto-DR) at Amy's Kitchen, a specialty food manufacturer.... Read more

Microsoft Corporation has launched a Web-based home energy management service, Hohm, which uses the energy models in the Home Energy Saver™, developed by the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab). Hohm will provide homeowners with a web-based energy dashboard to help them manage their home's energy use more effectively.... Read more

Two researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), Evan Mills and Michael Wehner, contributed to the analysis of the effects of climate change on all regions of the United States, described in a major report released today by the multi-agency U.S. Global Change Research Program.... Read more

New technology uses laser ablation — laser pulses that vaporize small amounts of material — to test for hazardous wastes and explosives while generating almost no chemical waste. The technology can save the lives of soldiers, keep children safe from toys illegally coated with lead paints, and protect workers from chemical poisoning.... Read more

Producing new commercial buildings that use 80 percent less energy than today's average building is a new target in the fight against global climate change. If such a building's remaining energy consumption is supplied by clean, carbon-neutral renewable energy, it would be responsible for little or no greenhouse gas emissions.... Read more

President Barack Obama and Energy Secretary Steve Chu are consistent in their message that when it comes to transportation fuels, carbon-neutral biofuels as an alternative to gasoline are coming. While the focus of a shift from gasoline to biofuels has been on global warming, such a shift could also impact human health.... Read more

A new data model developed by researchers at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and their colleagues at other universities and in the private sector will help facilities and buildings save power through automated demand response technology, and advance the development of the Smart Grid.... Read more