Smart Building Controls May Help Manage Peak Energy Demand In Northwest
Can information technology and smart building controls reduce the need to build expensive new electricity transmission lines? Researchers at the DOE's Pacific Northwest National Laboratory think they might. In a demonstration with the Bonneville Power Administration, PNNL is exploring the impacts of reducing electrical demand and on-site energy production at several buildings in Richland, WA where PNNL performs research for the federal government.
At the Applied Process Engineering Laboratory, PNNL installed a 30-kilowatt microturbine system. The small, natural gas-powered turbine can be started remotely by BPA to produce electricity for the building during times of peak electrical demand. This on-site production, called distributed generation, helps reduce stress on transmission lines by supplying some of the power for the building directly instead of pulling from the regional power grid.