Historical development of building energy calculations
- Ayres and Ezer Associates, Inc., Los Angeles, CA (United States)
- Stamper (Eugene), Teaneck, NJ (United States)
One of the most significant events in the history of ASHRAE has been its ability to respond to the societal need to reduce energy use in buildings. The development of computer technology and the scare of an Arab oil embargo in the early 1970s stimulated rapid improvements in calculation procedures to predict the thermal performance and energy requirements of buildings. Renewed interest in solar energy applications during that period attracted new scientific talent into ASHRAE, but it was primarily the use of computers for peak-load and energy calculations that attracted the brightest and most talented young engineers into the Society. It is important to note that almost all of the fundamental developments in energy calculation procedures resulted from governmental support. On a national level, it was funding from the U.S. Post Office Department (POD), the US Department of Energy (DOE)--formerly the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA), and the US Department of Defense (DOD) that resulted in the two major public domain programs--DOE-2 (LBL 1979) and BLAST (Hittle 1977). This support has been continuous since 1973 and, as discussed later, it evolved from two competing load calculation methodologies. All of the DOD funds were focused at the US Army Construction Engineering Research Laboratory (CERL), while DOE funds were distributed among various governmental laboratories that competed each year for funding from Washington, DC. This led to a curious history in the development of DOE-2, in which several national laboratories made important technical contributions in the early years. These laboratories were Argon National Laboratory (ANL), Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory (LASL), and Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (LBL). The DOE funding diminished quickly over time at ANL and somewhat later at LASL. LBL rapidly became the lead laboratory for the addition of new developments and maintenance of DOE-2.
- OSTI ID:
- 87446
- Report Number(s):
- CONF-950104--
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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