Energy usage within the world is increasing at a drastic rate. Buildings currently consume a major amount of the total energy used within the United States, and most of this energy usage supports heating and cooling. This demand shows that new passive energy management systems are needed. The use of Increased Thermal Capacitance (ITC) is proposed as a new passive energy management system. To increase thermal capacitance, a piping system is either added into a building's walls or ceiling. In this paper, a building with ITC added is compared to a similar building without ITC using the simulation program TRNSYS. Along with a comparison between the walls and ceiling, several parameters are analyzed for their effect on the performance of the ITC. ITC was found to be effective especially when located in the ceiling, with the location, specific heat and tank size being the most important factors. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Industrial facilities account for 33% of the annual energy usage within the United States [17] and this large sector of the domestic energy budget presents significant opportunities for energy efficiency. In order to effectively analyze energy savings opportunities in industrial facilities, adequate baseline models of energy usage in the facilities are needed. Multiple methods of creating baseline energy models have been used in commercial and residential buildings, however, few of these techniques have been made applied to develop baseline energy models in industrial facilities.The paper investigates the application of standard regression models used for commercial and residential buildings to industrial facilities using sparse energy consumption data. An analysis of the effectiveness of three parameter cooling (3PC) and cooling degree day (CDD) regression models to develop baseline energy usage models in industrial facilities from commonly available utility bill data is presented. Two case studies are investigated: in both case studies a comparison between 3PC model and CDD model is presented. In both cases the baseline regression models meet the recommended NMBE from the ASHRAE Guideline 14. A method to determine process equipment energy usage and cooling end use due to internal loads is presented.

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This paper evaluates the influence of several parameters on the potential of using increased thermal capacitance (ITC) as a passive energy management technique to decrease a building’s cooling load. ITC is implemented by circulating water from a storage tank through a piping system located in the building’s ceiling. The cooling load of the ITC enhanced building is compared to the cooling load of a reference building without ITC. TRNSYS, a transient system simulation software, is used to simulate both the ITC enhanced building and the reference building. The following parameters that affect the performance of the ITC are analyzed: tank size, specific heat, mass flow rate, initial temperature of the working fluid, pipe material and wall thickness, and location of the piping system in the ceiling. These parameters are also modified to achieve the best results for each of the climate conditions investigated. The simulations demonstrate that ITC has the potential to reduce the overall cooling load in a range between 4% to 8%, depending on the location and the month of the year.

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Forty percent of the global energy consumption is related directly to commercial and residential buildings. Homeowners of energy inefficient housing have an opportunity to reduce energy consumption and to assist in mitigating climate change. This paper reports a study on retrofitting flat roofs of energy inefficient housing in St. Louis, MO. A life cycle analysis was conducted on a 120 year old house to evaluate two design options: a green roof vs. a white roof (solar reflective paint). Both options were studied at a 10 year of roof maintenance cycle. The study found that the green roof would require more retrofit embodied energy than that of the white roof, because the green roof requires soil transportation, soil pan fabrication, roof joist retrofit kit, and the ceiling replacement, while the white roof requires only the manufactured paint. However, the green roof would still outperform the white roof over a 10 year period on total energy consumption. Furthermore, both options would provide energy savings over the no-retrofit option.