By Douglas Weinstein
Photo by Warren Gretz | NREL
On November 20, 1979, SERI’s (NREL’s) Photovoltaic Laboratories were dedicated in honor of Founding Director, Dr. Paul Rappaport (Director from July 1977 through July 1979).
At the conclusion of World War II, the strategic importance of the nation’s scientific capabilities and nuclear technologies was unquestioned, but the open debate as to whether the military should continue to oversee peacetime nuclear research was unsettled. In 1946, consensus on this issue emerged through enactment of the Atomic Energy Act, which transferred responsibility for nuclear research and development to a new independent civilian agency, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), led by five Commissioners appointed by President Harry S. Truman.
In 1971, concerns about rising petroleum imports drove President Nixon to expand the AEC research charter to include non-nuclear forms of energy and related technologies. Three years later, the Arab oil embargo motivated a wave of energy-related national policy initiatives. The President proposed a new five-year, $10 billion energy research and development program, and a doubling of the total federal commitment to energy research and development for fiscal year 1975. Soon thereafter, lawmakers terminated the AEC and placed its research functions under the newly created Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA). ERDA consolidated existing energy research activities across the AEC and other agencies; its basic research portfolio included nuclear, solar, fossil and geothermal energy, as well as conservation, synthetic fuels, and power transmission.
Three years after the creation of ERDA, the establishment of the Department of Energy (DOE) gathered under one authority most of the federal government’s energy-related research, policy and regulatory activities. The Department of Energy Organization Act of 1977 specifically created the Office of Energy Research, led for the first time by a Presidential-appointed, Senate-confirmed Director, as the steward of DOE’s basic research portfolio.
NREL Campus, Golden, Colorado
Like the political and energy landscape at the time, the birth of the Solar Energy Research Institute (SERI) in 1977, which then became the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in 1991, was at times tumultuous. Born from a need for better energy solutions, the newly formed DOE realized that creating an organization solely dedicated to clean energy was crucial to our nation’s ability to achieve energy independence. NREL specializes in the research and development of renewable power, energy efficiency, energy systems integration, and sustainable transportation. NREL is a federally funded national laboratory sponsored by DOE and operated by the Alliance for Sustainable Energy, a joint venture between MRIGlobal and Battelle. Located in Golden, Colorado, NREL is home to the National Center for Photovoltaics, the National Bioenergy Center, and the National Wind Technology Center.
I recently sat down with Dr. Prateek Shrestha who is a research engineer at NREL to talk about his specialties, NREL’s mission and how they are helping industries and consumers transform their energy usage.
The most important thing I’d relay to your
audience is that there is a lot of information we’ve put out – in fact, all of the national labs have, over the decades – that is accessible by the general public for free.
Doug: You must have had an interesting journey growing up in Nepal and ending up in Colorado researching sustainable energy solutions.
Prateek: Yes, it has definitely been quite a journey! I’ve always had a fascination and passion about technology. Growing up I was fascinated with toys (that’s probably my mechanical engineering genes) and probably had more toys than friends. I’ve always had an affinity for abstract calculations and how this impacts life. I went to Tribhuvan University’s Institute of Engineering (IOE), Pulchowk Campus in Kathmandu, which is the largest and oldest university in Nepal. I graduated in 2011 from IOE with a B.E. in mechanical engineering. While at university I was exposed to a range of energy issues. Studying how to design, build and operate machines in college was a lot of fun. But my real fascination remained in utilizing all that knowledge to do something meaningful, with a real and tangible impact to the world we all live in.
I took some electives during my undergraduate years that centered on energy. I was interested in exploring things like the rate that we are burning fossil fuels and how long they will last, and then what do we do? Not to mention the impact on the climate. So, you begin to look at alternatives and solutions. More importantly, alternatives that are viable and can make positive change. I think that drivers such as money and profit can still be motivators by taking the right steps to more efficient and cleaner energy. And the way you will have to make these changes is through technology. Right now, for example, fossil fuel cars are cheaper than e-cars, but eventually that won’t be the case. Technology innovations will be the catalyst to drive such change.
So how could I make an impact myself? I was interested in the subject matter, especially as it relates to the general lifestyle of people. Transforming energy usage became my grounding force. In 2012, I applied for a Ph.D. program at the University of Colorado Boulder and got accepted. I began studying computational fluid dynamics, describing how fluids flow in reacting, combusting, turbulent and supersonic regimes. But soon I found myself gravitating towards hands-on and applied engineering much more. I then met Professor Shelly Miller at the same university who was doing research on indoor air quality. Professor Miller’s research was closely related to heating, ventilating and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems in buildings and studied the nexus of creating a healthy indoor environment while also considering the energy impacts in buildings. I found it very interesting and decided to join her research group.
For my Ph.D. research, I led a team of about a dozen research assistants on a study learning about how building envelope air tightness could impact not just how much energy we use in our homes but also its impact on indoor air quality and eventually the air that we breathe for over 90 percent of the time in any given day. I visited many homes in Colorado and performed blower door testing and indoor and outdoor air quality monitoring. A subset of that research was to study the level of infiltration of outdoor smoke and air pollutants during wildfire seasons.
After completing my doctorate degree, I worked as an air quality consultant for a company in Salt Lake City for a year. Then I had an opportunity to work as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. My research work at Oak Ridge was focused on developing an experimental plan for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) under a congressionally mandated study called the ‘Vermiculite Study’. This study was about identifying and mitigating the risks of low income-qualified households seeking WAP energy retrofits to their homes when their homes contained pre-existing vermiculite insulation material which may potentially contain asbestos. When the pandemic hit, I also got a chance to work on a study with other researchers at Oak Ridge to investigate the nature of spread of simulated coronavirus-laden aerosols across different rooms and floors of an office building. Later, I was also involved in other studies trying to model how the air flows from one room of an experimental building to another, so as to better predict air leakage characteristics which may impact the overall building energy consumption.
Eventually, given to family reasons (my girlfriend who is now my wife!) and since I went to school there, I chose to move back to Colorado and job wise, a good fit for me was NREL. I applied and was accepted as a research engineer.
Photo by Werner Slocum | NREL
Doug: So how does NREL function and what is their focus?
Prateek: We are part of the 17 national laboratories in the DOE national lab system. Each lab is specialized, and the focus area of NREL is renewable energy and energy efficiency. We provide the specialized knowledge to generate, utilize, promote and integrate renewable energy systems and promote energy efficiency across a spectrum of end-uses ranging from transportation, industries, the grid, and commercial and residential buildings in an equitable manner, respecting the various races and ethnicities who live in the United States.
We started in 1977 as the Solar Energy Research Institute – SERI. After the oil embargo in the 1970’s, it was important for the nation to reduce dependence on traditional energy sources, and so the lab began researching renewable energy sources such as wind and solar. We expanded our research to look at energy efficiencies as well as sustainable transportation. We collaborate with state and local governments, tribal entities, foundations and industry partners to promote not just cutting-edge science, but to deploy the results of rigorous research and translate the taxpayer dollar investments in research to real-world results.
In the area of building energy efficiency, for example, energy auditors might want to look at a house design and how it can be upgraded for better energy efficiency. We develop software that the energy auditors will use, and it will list out all of the available options to increase efficiency of energy use in that building. We also develop software that simulates energy consumption patterns in all types of buildings. EnergyPlus is one example of a widely used software program, sponsored by the DOE and developed in part by NREL researchers, that simulates the energy usage of a building, encompassing everything including lighting, HVAC equipment, appliances, hot water, and other forms of energy usage.
While the majority of our funding comes from the DOE, we collaborate with various partners who want to use our expertise to improve how we produce, use and manage energy in our buildings and homes.
Doug: What’s your role as a research engineer?
Prateek: My focus is modeling and data analytics in the Residential Buildings Research Group at NREL. Overall, my position is focused on studying the energy consumption patterns and opportunities for improving energy efficiency of residential buildings. I generally work with experts to do energy modeling, that is, simulating energy consumption of buildings under different operating scenarios. An example is a recent study we did on the heating and cooling energy consumed by 3D-printed concrete buildings in hot climates. I also help develop software programs that do these energy consumption simulations for buildings. Additionally, I also work in attaching instruments to existing buildings to gather data that will enable us to do a better energy modeling job and study the real impact of existing and new technologies in building energy consumption. I also help analyze the data from buildings utilizing renewable energy sources like solar and geothermal heat. As an example, I recently got a chance to work with experts at the Cold Climate Housing Research Center in Alaska (who are now a part of NREL) in a study for evaluating the sustainability of a geothermal heat pump system of a building in rural Alaska using the energy generated mostly with rooftop solar panels. Our software platforms, energy modeling software, can model single or multiple buildings, so you can predict energy usage patterns on a narrower or wider scale. What are you consuming now and what if you invest in upgrades, how will your usage and expenses change? We’re looking at the before- and after- upgrade scenarios, and how best to transform our energy usage as we move more and more towards renewables and away from fossil fuels. As I mentioned earlier, advances in technology are the way we will transform our energy usage, but it takes not only lab-based experimental research and development, but also modeling and simulation of various scenarios so that we can take the guess work out of likely advances we’ll be making over time.
I also do experimental work. GSA, the General Services Administration, owns a lot of federal buildings and they are interested in running them more efficiently. We’re instrumenting a federal courthouse, equipped with a new technology that treats the outdoor air before it enters the HVAC system of the building so that dehumidification of the outdoor air is achieved with minimum possible energy use. We collect the data through various sensors and provide it to the modeling team. Another one of our studies looks at utilizing geothermal heat pumps in the residential building stock across the continental United States and makes predictions about energy consumption scenarios in homes that use this technology.
Photo by Dennis Schroeder | NREL
Photo by Werner Slocum | NREL
Doug: How does our audience, architects, builders and property developers, benefit from your efforts? How can they capitalize on what the DOE and the national labs are doing?
Prateek: That’s a great question. The most important thing I’d relay to your audience is that there is a lot of information we’ve put out – in fact, all of the national labs have, over the decades – that is accessible by the general public for free. Our research can greatly impact how architects and builders design and build homes. First, building science is needed to develop effective standards and codes, then meeting those standards through clever and informed design processes, and finally exceeding the energy efficiency standards is only possible when the entire design-build process is well-informed by good research findings.
From there you can go into as much detail as you want. Just take building envelopes, for example. There are lots of documents, standards, procedures and information that you can read. While there are already codes in place, when you talk about insulation levels in wall cavities, you can certainly go well beyond the basic standards. And here’s how specific you can get – our research in many cases is specific to the region. So, you can get it right for that one home in that particular environment. You can take your initial design and look at renewable integration, things like heat pumps, solar and geothermal.
Heat pumps, as I’m sure your audience is aware, are gaining in popularity. So are smart thermostats and occupancy sensors. Window energy efficiency is huge. A poorly designed window wastes tons of energy. And more and more building systems are becoming grid-interactive, often constantly communicating over the internet. And then there is also tons of information on indoor air quality. Your audience is certainly aware of VOCs and off-gassing, so they can go beyond those concerns to look at the entirety of indoor air quality issues.
And let’s not forget smart landscaping. Trees can shade areas that cool them naturally and require less cooling energy. Your drapes and blinds are always important. Automate them to shade when the sun is direct, and open when the sun has passed. So, we can provide guidance to everyone in the design-build community. All of these topics, and much, much more, are available if you are interested in doing your research to improve your deliverables to the homeowner.
DOE has provided a plethora of credible information online. Let me close by advising your audience to be cognizant of what you are doing and what you can do to improve your and your clients’ carbon footprints.
Douglas Weinstein is the Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Technology Designer Magazine and the Technology Insider Group, as well as a Partner at TIG Global PR. A thirty-year veteran of the consumer technology industry, he is the Co-Founder and past Executive Director of the Elf Foundation, a non-profit organization creating Room of Magic entertainment theaters in children’s hospitals across North America.
