Enter your ideas here! 

And remember, there are no wrong answers!

The infrastructure required for the additional generator capacity is a huge financial, and sometimes physical, barrier to conversion to electricity.

(reposted from a question we received during the workshop)

Does anyone have any experience or knowledge of proven photovoltaic wrap products that are applied to glass? We came across an article recently where this was installed on a skyscraper in China. 

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2019/07/10/hanergy-wraps-460-kw-of-cigs-around-chinese-skyscraper/

An energy balance discussion on heat/energy input and heat/energy output. 

Consider the energy inputs and outputs of our facilities. It also helps to think of heat as energy, primarily when talking about outputs. Heat leaving the building is energy wasted that could otherwise be recovered. 

Inputs: 

• Electricity for lighting, pumps, fans, plug loads, medical equipment, and chillers.
• Natural gas for boilers for heating, domestic hot water heating, sterilization, cooking, humidification.
• Solar heat gain through windows and facade

Outputs: 

• Exhaust fans
• Economizers
• Cooling tower heat rejection
• Conduction through the envelope
• Exfiltration through cracks in doors/ windows/ envelope

Traditionally, buildings are designed to reject heat through the air or chiller/cooling tower systems, while simultaneously adding more heat to the building by burning natural gas. A useful practice is to build an energy model and create a building's energy balance diagram to better understand how much heat is in the building from electrical loads, to then determine if there is enough available heat to be recovered to satisfy the heating load. 

Below is an energy balance Sankey diagram for a sample hospital in CA. The diagram represents energy/heat inputs and outputs for January of a recent year, the coldest month where the heating load is highest. 

It is also helpful to think of all energy inputs and outputs in terms of MWh. Energy is heat and heat is energy. This levels the playing field for this energy balance discussion. 

Hospital air systems require a significant design effort. Each space must be assessed for minimum outdoor air ventilation, minimum total ventilation, and pressure relationship. Kaiser Permanente and Mazzetti worked together on a California Energy Commissioning research project “Advanced HVAC Technology Demonstration Project to Reduce Natural Gas Use in Hospitals”, where existing constant-volume systems were converted to variable air volume. During the project, the design process for variable volume systems had to be articulated. Once articulated for the project, we formulated it into a generic design process, which is presented here. 

The following is a process for the design of variable volume central air handling systems in US hospitals. There are seven steps. 

(1) define the peak and neutral conditions, 

(2) divide the space into zones, 

(3) load calculations (peak condition), 

(4) peak condition room balance schedule (RBS), 

(5) neutral condition room balance schedule (RBS), 

(6) operating performance prediction, and 

(7) acceptance criteria for commissioning. 

Step five is novel, since it involves calculating air flows and room balances at a system minimum condition. Most design engineers perform these calculations at the maximum heating and maximum cooling conditions. But, creating an explicit design for the neutral or system minimum condition may be a new practice to many. 

Steps 6 and 7, which are optional, are needed for operational performance validation, i.e. if data systems are used to validate the design intent.

(reposting)

Can we add Hydrogen as a tag/thread vs just Fuel Cell?

(reposting)

Hello, I am working with groups in Europe to look at transitioning from our Natural gas-powered products to Hydrogen. Has there been any discussion on this within the Healthcare community?

(reposting from Walt Vernon)

I have come across a company called Plug Power Fuel Cells:

https://www.plugpower.com

I know that this project is supposed to avoid the issue of fuel switching, but this seems really important. Does anybody have experience with these folks?

(reposting)

It seems like boilers, in a lot of cases, are not sized well to match their duty. 

We've been trying to look at data on heating systems, Load = GPM * DT, and then comparing that to monthly natural gas bill data. There seems to be a big gap between the design loads and the actual. Most importantly, the boiler systems spend a LOT of time at low loads (Where i think efficiency is pretty bad, and the data seems to back that up)

(reposting)

In the past year's meetings at ASHRAE-170, the committee has become pretty clear that "energy is not in our scope" or "energy is not in our charter".

The way it is often said is "the scope and purpose of the standard ONLY covers asepsis and odor control", and, as such any discussion of ventilation rates CANNOT consider energy, or carbon, or cost.

The National Academy of Medicine (NAM) "roadmap" for decarbonization has, as one of it's points, to work with regulators to "to develop process for application of evidence and trade-offs to policy in the built environment" and "commit to better evidentiary procedures". 

It seem like, as long as ASHRAE (and the 170 standard specifically) has a set of horse-blinders on, which excludes energy and carbon, we're a bit stuck.