Passive House in Germany

Today New York Times issued an article about passive houses built in Germany, which do not use furnaces for heating even in harsh German winters. As per article, passive houses "get all the heat and hot water they need from the amount of energy that would be needed to run a hair dryer". Read the full article here.
To learn more about passive houses, you can also see Wikipedia article about this subject. As per ASHRAE, passive houses cost about 5% to 7% more to build than conventional German houses.

(Picture by permission from Passivhaus Institut, Germany)

OpenStudio - EnergyPlus plugin for SketchUp

National Renewable Energy Laboratory for the U.S. Department of Energy released EnergyPlus free plugin for SketchUp called OpenStudio. Read the article and download the plugin here.

Rainwater Harvesting

Great introductory video about rainwater harvesting by environmentalist and educator Bred Lancaster. Visit his web site at www.harvestingrainwater.com for more articles, pictures and videos.

Drake Landing Solar Community

Drake Landing Solar Community in Alberta, Canada is a brave pioneer and leading example of sustainable neighborhood design. It is the first neighborhood built in North America that uses solar power for up to 90% of its heating needs. Equipped with 800 garage-mounted solar panels, it provides 1.5 mega-watts for 52 houses. It has 2 short-term storage tanks for immediate needs and 144 long-term storage bore-holes that run 37 meters deep and keep glycol warm even in cold Canadian winters. Solar pales absorb Sun's energy and heat glycol, which is then pushed by pumps through heating coils of air-handling units mounted in each house basement. Using air-handling unit's fan, mixed outside and return air are then run over the heating coil and delivered to rooms through a system of ducts.
Visit their web site to explore this amazing achievement. You can find there more detailed description of how the system really works, how it is built and updates about how it is performing so far. Also, you'll find very good video about the idea and concept that drove design of this neighborhood.

Location: Okotoks, Alberta. 51.1 deg N, 114 deg W, 1084 m elevation
Weather: Winter -27.4 F; Summer 82.9 F DB/60.1 F WB
Web Site: http://www.dlsc.ca

Live THE Box

Sustainable Engineering Studio participated with AE Workshop in the Live THE Box competition in Newark, New Jersey. Since Newark is the biggest shipping port in the United States with abundance of shipping containers, the main idea was to use them as construction units and build neighborhood out of them. You can read more about the competition and see our suggested solution here.

Update:
See the winners here. (No, we didn't win, but we had lots of fun working on it!)

Understanding the Energy Modeling Process

Excellent article about energy modeling process by Marc Rosenbaum. See introduction below. Read the article here.

"The goal of this paper is to demystify energy modeling for design and facilities-planning professionals. By “energy modeling,” I mean using computer-based tools to simulate the energy use of a building throughout an entire year of operation. This is commonly referred to as “annual energy use simulation.”
The U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Rating System (LEED™) requires energy modeling to assess the energy use of a building and to quantify the savings attributable to the proposed design. In many cases, architects and building owners are inexperienced with energy modeling and don’t know how to harness this powerful tool to inform the design and decision-making process. Properly used, energy modeling can help optimize the building design and allow the design team to prioritize investment in the strategies that will have the greatest effect on the building’s energy use. This paper seeks to put architects and facility owners in a position to effectively direct the modeling process and evaluate the validity of the output presented."

Passive House in Ireland

Very good video about passive house built in Galway, Ireland.