Many industrialized countries are exploring ways to facilitate the prioritization of efforts targeting improved thermal efficiency in an aging building stock. Older buildings, typically, have inefficient building envelopes and higher energy-consumption patterns relative to new construction, which contributes to higher overall energy consumption at the local and regional scale. Reducing energy consumption by increasing the efficiency of older buildings will result in lower anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions and help address the growing issues related to climate change. To address these concerns a GIS-based approach is developed to evaluate building-stock age in rural communities with limited access to historical parcel data. This approach involves georeferencing historical Sanborn insurance maps, digitizing building footprints for each year. This methodology is applied to a small town in rural Vermont and a map is produced depicting the spatiotemporal evolution of building construction over the years 1885–1940. 1091 structures built prior to 1941 are identified and it is argued that weatherization efforts should focus on the oldest buildings first and sequentially address younger structures, lowering both energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions associated with the least-efficient building stock.
BACKGROUNDAs module prices have continued to decline (Maycock, 1995), interest in the technical and economic feasibility of using dispatchable photovoltaic (DPV) systems in peak-shaving applications on commercial buildings has grown.Currently, the United States Department of Energy is supporting the development of an integrated DPV peak shaving (DPV-PS) system for the commercial buildings sector through the PV:BONUS Program. Modest amounts of battery storage are used in conjunction with a PV array to achieve firm peak-shaving for commercial building operators. The development of this system involves the collaborative effort of the following organizations:
SummaryA shift from fossil fuels to electricity for transportation energy will pose challenges for utility providers while also presenting opportunities for economic, grid reliability, and environmental benefits. Strategic integration of electric vehicles (EVs) with the grid would more fully realize the benefits that EVs offer and potentially make EV ownership more affordable through the provision of reliability and resilience services to the grid.The New York State roadmap presented here was informed by a preliminary research report, gap analysis, and stakeholder feedback; it identifies the current state of grid-interactive vehicles, examines how to overcome existing barriers, and presents a strategic plan for EV grid-integration.
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