Grant Grable

Jun 15 2009 9:25AM | Permalink | Email this | Comments (0) |
Blog This! using: Blogger.com | LiveJournal |

Daylighting’s approval as a renewable energy technology Under EPACT 2005 amendment in January, 2008 may cause the art of daylighting to become mainstream.

On May 22, 2009, at a conference regarding solar energy financing, a Treasury Department official commented favorably on the new program that lets renewable energy providers claim cash grants in lieu of tax credits. Ellen Neubauer is the Program Grants Manager within the Treasury Department’s Office of Fiscal Assistant Secretary. In her remarks at the IPED solar energy conference, she confirmed that her office has been delegated the management and supervision responsibility of the grants in lieu of tax credits (the “Cash Funding”) program under Section 1603 of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (the “ARRA”).

Section 1603(b) of the ARRA provides that the amount o...Read More

May 14 2009 12:00AM | Permalink | Email this | Comments (0) |
Blog This! using: Blogger.com | LiveJournal |

On May 5, 2009, The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) today introduced Commercial Lighting Solutions, its latest innovation designed to improve energy efficiency in commercial buildings with a major focus on retail energy initiatives as well as Daylighting. The interactive Web tool is designed to help commercial building owners improve lighting efficiency by at least 30% over ASHRAE 90.1-2004 and begins to bring focus to the major changes that ASHRAE 90.1-2007 adds especially when it comes to daylighting of buildings with controls. This tool produced by the DOE provides great insight into the benefit that daylighting can provide to the building owner.  With a small amount of information, a building owner or developer can discover daylighting techniques that can reduce electric energy consumption by more than 50% just by utilizing daylighting and controls. Commercial Lighting S...Read More

Apr 27 2009 12:00AM | Permalink | Email this | Comments (1) |
Blog This! using: Blogger.com | LiveJournal |

I don’t know if you are like me, but when I opened my inbox today it was filled with ump-teen emails regarding Earth Day.  Save the planet was the model for all and how their product or service would help save the environment.  I related the experience to the overwhelming throng of people who end up in Church on Easter Sunday or Christmas Eve only to find the next week a half vacant church. On this Earth Day, I chose to wait till the day after to post to my blog as it isn’t the” one day a year that someone makes a difference to our environment, it is the forward moving commitment everyday that gets the job done. If we were to change our focus to “Earth Month” or Earth Year” not only would we produce a true impact to the ills in our environment, but we would open our eyes and see that going green actually makes you ...Read More

Apr 14 2009 12:00AM | Permalink | Email this | Comments (2) |
Blog This! using: Blogger.com | LiveJournal |

There is a lot of misinformation out there when it comes to toplighting or daylighting with skylights for energy savings.  The miss information has even lead many northern city’s building codes to be set with standards that minimize the true opportunity available through daylighting.  The biggest misnomer in daylighting is this...Thermal efficiency (increase U-Value at the risk of a reduction of hours that you can shut your lights off in the building may actually be costing you more total energy dollars!  

Engineers for years have had a negative thought about skylights.  Prior to the current addendums to ASHRAE 90.1, when a building designer would add skylights into their design it was assumed that the common skylight product brought in too much heat in during the summer and that they lost way too much heat during the winter to be thought of as a...Read More

Apr 1 2009 12:00AM | Permalink | Email this | Comments (2) |
Blog This! using: Blogger.com | LiveJournal |

Besides the recent information posted on this blog on the reduction in CO2 production that daylighting provides through reduction of kWh energy usage, The Energy Performance Act of 2005 (EPACT) also poses a great incentive to consider daylight harvesting under the energy efficient lighting program with the inclusion of lighting controls. A tax deduction of up to $1.80/sf is available for buildings that achieve a 50% energy cost reduction compared to a standard reference building meeting ASHRAE/IESNA 90.1-2001. System-specific deductions up to $0.60/sf are available for interior lighting, HVAC and building envelope that achieve a 16 2/3% energy cost reduction compared to the standard reference building. Interior lighting systems that have substantially lower power density than the lighting requirements for the energy standard are eligible for the system-specifi...Read More