 Good afternoon, this is Howard Wigg, Code Green, Think Tech, Hawaii on a beautiful Hawaiian Day, November 28, 2016. You will notice that I am here alone without a guest. He may be a ghost guest at the moment. If he were here, his name would be Professor James Mascary, Architecture Department, University of Hawaii. And he is the Project Manager for FROG, what is FROG? Flexible Response to Ongoing Growth. That's maybe a very clumsy title, but it boils down to the fact that he and his grad students are designing classrooms for zero net energy. Most of you know what that is, but I'll explain it anyway. You reduce, reduce, reduce, reduce the energy use in your home or in this case in your classroom until it's the use is so low that when you put photovoltaic panels up on the roof, that amount of energy produced equals or even exceeds the amount of energy that is consumed by the use, the lights, the computers and so forth in the classroom. And to begin this program, and hopefully my guests will show up, we will show a video of something that Mr. Mascary and his students put together. Now here is the mock-up of the classroom. Actually, I believe it is now completed. And here are the overhangs, and let's see, can we get a voice on this young fellow? Oh, he is, this is one of the students, and he is praising the heck out of the classroom. See that their ceiling fans are very, very efficient lights, it's all LEDs. This is a super-duper air conditioning system, and all of these wires monitor the energy use in the classroom. And there's Mr. Mascary explaining, again note the use of extensive day lighting in the foyer and in the classroom so that you need very, very little artificial light. And the temperature is carefully monitored. Note in the clear stories up there, the trade winds are coming through. Here's Mr. Mascary, and they have been using this classroom for quite some time now with very, very, very good results. It helps that it's in lower Manoa so that you're getting the trade winds coming through. And you need to monitor any experimental building like this. And so you have all of these readouts, which also serve as learning centers for the students. You're measuring your temperature from the beginning of the day to the end of the day, your relative humidity, the wind speed. Here's another student saying how happy and how pleased she is and how comfortable she is with the results. And that does it for the video. So why don't we elaborate on this by beginning the slide presentation and I will walk us through it. Now this is when you look at a high performance classroom or home, you don't just look at energy use. You must have an environment that is healthier, more productive, more comfortable than your ordinary air conditioned classroom. And we can see no VOCs. The room has ceiling tiles in it so that you don't have sound bouncing all over the place. Natural day lighting, very, very important. We human beings have been on the earth for about 200,000 years. We have only had artificial light for the last 100 years or so. So day lighting, our eyes are attuned to daylight and we perform much better under daylight. And test results go up. Fresh air, this is the most beautiful climate in Hawaii. And when you have any air conditioned environment, you tend to have a build up of CO2 or carbon dioxide, which makes us a bit sleepy. And in terms of the daylight, you want to have no glare, no heat gain, just uniform light. Now here's the before and after results of the different classrooms. We see three different classrooms there. And we are achieving savings. We don't have the photovoltaic produced energy yet, but again, the first step is to go down, down, down in energy use. And you see reference to occupant behavior there. Your mother always told you to turn off the lights in your house and the same principles apply here. Only we don't have so much artificial light. We have a lot of computers and we have fans in these classrooms. The students must alter their behavior such that the computers don't only get switched off, but as you know, there's something called standby mode for computers where they are still using perhaps 20% of their original energy use. And what you can do, and this can all be controlled, is turn those computers down to absolute zero. Only disadvantage is when you start them up again in the morning, you have to wait a few minutes. So you get into the habit of switching on the computer, then going to get your cup of coffee or whatever and allowing the computer to warm up. And here is the energy use graphs. And you will see the purple lines where the original and the green line going across is the energy use saved by all of these measures. And these are the three different classrooms there. And of course, we use more energy during the hot months. And this includes incidentally during that horrible period that we had last year around September of very, very, very high humidity and combined with high temperatures. It was, I think, the worst weather we've ever had. And of course, your energy use is going to go up, but it didn't go up as much as it would have under ordinary circumstances. So here's a breakout of the energy use in the classrooms. That long green line is the air conditioning. And note the ceiling fan energy versus air conditioning energy. This is what we really, really want to strive for is getting not using air conditioning and using ceiling fans. Ceiling fans, when they're at a high speed, reduce our perceived body temperature by as much as 12 degrees. So if it felt like it was 90 degrees in the classroom, turn on that fan and the perceived temperature goes down to 78 degrees, which for us local people is a totally, totally comfortable environment. You saw also the next largest energy user was computers. And this is a reality that is emerging or has emerged not only in classrooms, but in offices and indeed in homes. Think of your typical home now. Dad might have a computer. Mom has a computer. And the two kids not only have computers. They have all kinds of computer games. Plus dad just went out and purchased a 72 inch TV screen. And they're much more efficient than they used to be, but still that's a really big user. So we look more and more at what are called the plug loads. So here is a comparison of natural ventilation, which refers to the fact that there are openable windows on both sides. And we're all familiar with the fact that the trade winds should come in on one side and then you always have to have an opening on the other side to let those trade winds flow through. Active ventilation refers to ceiling fans and they are on hopefully most of the time. And then we have air conditioning. I wish Jim were here to defend himself because had I been designing this, I would not have had provided the option for air conditioning. Because I know from many, many experiences that if the air conditioning is there, people are automatically going to turn it on. I would not have air conditioning and have the ceiling fans be very, very variable so you can turn it up to a high speed. And well, here's a good example. You have a beautiful Hawaiian winter day. It's early in the morning, the temperature outside is 71 degrees. Do a survey of the cars going to school or work. And in my experience, 90% of them will have the windows closed and the air conditioning on. That adds 20% to your gasoline consumption. Why are you doing this? Because you have the air conditioning. This is inherent human behavior. I've observed this not just with the air conditioning but with day lighting. When you have all the day lighting in the world that you need in a classroom, people will still turn the lights on. They are just conditioned that way. So I would, if it was necessary to have air conditioning in a classroom, I would have it controlled in a central location such that the teacher or professor would have to go to that central location and not just ask for air conditioning but beg for air conditioning and whoever was controlling it would say, Professor, this is a beautiful Hawaiian winter day. It's 76 degrees outside, the breeze is blowing. Why do you need air conditioning? The guidelines, and you have very strict guidelines for this. Guidelines prohibit air conditioning at this time. You're perfectly comfortable now, get used to it. And again, the person wouldn't be arbitrary like that, it would say. You don't fit the guidelines. This is not within the rules. So how do you keep these buildings naturally cool? Well, actually, let's take a brief break. You're watching Think Tech Hawaii, which streams live on ThinkTechHawaii.com, uploads to YouTube.com, and broadcasts on cable OC16 and Ollello 54. Great content for Hawaii from Think Tech. Aloha, my name is Richard Emory, host of Condo Insider. More than a third of Hawaii's population live in some form of association. Our show is all about educating board members and owners about their responsibilities and obligations and providing solutions for a great association. You can watch me live on Thursdays, 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. each week. Aloha. Hello, and Aloha. My name is Raya Salter, and I am the host of Power of Hawaii, where Hawaii comes together to figure out how we're going to work towards a clean and renewable energy future. We have exciting conversations with all kinds of stakeholders, everyone who needs to come together to talk about renewable energy, be they engineers, advocates, lawyers, utility executives, musicians or artists, to see how we can come together to make a renewable future. Tuesdays at 1 p.m. Good afternoon again, Howard Wigg, Code Green, Think Tech Hawaii. This is Howard Wigg flying solo today, talking about frog. Flexible response ongoing growth at the University of Hawaii, where there are experimental classrooms designed to absolutely minimize the energy use in those classrooms such that you can put photovoltaic panels on the roof of those classrooms and they will produce as much energy as the classroom is consuming. That's the dream for not every building in Hawaii, but all low-rise buildings and indeed all homes. So if we can resume our last slide, we're looking at the different options, natural air conditioning or natural ventilation, the trade winds going through, ceiling fans consume something like one twentieth the energy as does air conditioning. So we want to use ceiling fans almost all the time and air conditioning almost none of the time. And incidentally, this is an ongoing conversation I've been having with the Department of Education, schoolroom designers, the press keeps talking about air conditioning a thousand classrooms, air conditioning a thousand classrooms. Number one, we can't afford it. Number two, if we had all of that air conditioning in the schools, the DOE wouldn't be able to pay you the utility bills. So let's do things like this. What are we doing? When we put photovoltaic panels up on the roof, we are reducing the heat gain, the amount of heat going through the roof into the classroom to virtually zero. We have plenty of daylighting. Look at those big windows in there, but number one, there are big overhangs. They're being shaded to a very, very nice degree. Number three, even when the sun directly strikes it, it's called radiant energy. These are called high performance windows and only 25% of the heat that strikes the window actually gets into the interior. But your VLT, your visible light transmittance, the amount of daylight that you can see outside is extremely good. This is high tech in action. And then again the ceiling fans and the trade winds. Now, these are experimental classrooms and they're meant to educate students. And sensors are coming on very strong. Look at the sensors on the left, air conditioning, condenser, fan coil, lighting indoors, lighting outdoors, ceiling fans, exhaust fans, plug glows, photovoltaic energy production. Just 10, 15 years ago, it would have been very expensive to install all of these energy sensors. But Moore's Law, you remember good old Moore's Law, where the sophistication of electronics is going up at rocket speed, the size is going down and the cost is going down. And it's not only those sensors, look at weather sensors, temperature, relative humidity, solar radiation, wind speed, direction, indoor sensors, room, air tension, wall, temperature, and so forth. Oh, and even the illumination levels and to monitor how well the day lighting is doing and air speed. And the data is compiled such that the equipment in the classroom responds accordingly. Like only when the conditions get above X temperature and X relative humidity only then, ideally, would the air conditioning be switched on. And with CO2 carbon dioxide concentration, when you have the windows open, you have beautiful, beautiful air quality. So the indoor air quality suffers only when you have total air conditioning. And then we compare the different classrooms and we figure out that some are performing much better than others. We have all of these sensors. So we can analyze this data and actually there's, we hear reference to the cloud. We can put all of this data up into a cloud where there are programs and they analyze just what the conditions were and what the responses of the equipment were. And the result is EUI, Energy Use Index. And that's kind of the interior equivalent of miles to the gallon. It's kilowatt hours per square foot per year. And usually classrooms have a very, very low EUI because they're used only, say, 2,000 hours a year. The highest category of building with EUIs is hospitals because think about it, they have to have extensive air conditioning going 24-7. They've got to get that nasty air out of there. So what you're doing with the classrooms is striving for a very, very low EUI. And again, we saw all those monitors in there. We're going to figure out exactly why the classrooms are performing as they're performing. So I believe we have a couple more slides here. When we design buildings like this, we not only want them to be very, very energy efficient. We want them to be very high quality so that your air temperature is ideal. The humidity, what air conditioning does is take humidity out of the air. We want to achieve that same feeling with ceiling fans because at any given time we have some moisture on our skin. The ceiling fan blows the air over it, evaporates that moisture, and we have a perception of coolness. And radiant heat that refers to the sunlight coming directly in and striking you. Again, we have very large overhangs so that we don't get radiant heat into the classroom. And if it does strike the window again, we talked about high performance windows. And clothing, we don't wear tweed jackets in Hawaii. There is a professional engineering association called ASHRAE, and they actually have a measurement unit called CLO, C-L-O. And they analyze what effect a given type of clothing will have on the comfort of the individual. And lo and behold, what they conclude is when you have a light colored, short sleeve shirt on, you are more comfortable than if you have a long sleeve shirt plus a heavy jacket on. What a concept. So they recommend a set amount of clothe for a given environment. And in our climate, I dare say they would recommend aloha shirts or the female equivalent thereof. Again, you want to stress comfort in these buildings. You cannot have people saying, oh, I was still sweaty there. And we are reading time after time about kids in public school classrooms just being so hot and so humid they can barely function and diddle with the teachers also. So we want to do the opposite of that. Now, air quality. Which state of the union has the best air quality? Starts with an H. It's Hawaii. We are blessed with beautiful, beautiful air quality. And the idea when you're designing these buildings is to maximize good air quality by having the trade winds come through. Now, this is contingent upon the classroom not being in proximity to say a major highway or next to the airport. So you have a noise quality issue. We've had a few classrooms, what is it? Puohale classroom, which is out on Nimitz Highway. And you have the highway going by and we said a long time ago, yep, gotta close these classrooms up, gotta have air conditioning because of the constant noise. And the air pollution contingencies that go along with being next to a major highway. But in most cases schools are well located. You can have beautiful, beautiful air quality just by maximizing the flow through of the trade winds. And of course that saves a heck of a lot of energy. We could look at the next slide. Climate change. Which climate increase will climate change increase our need for air conditioning? Yes, the temperatures are going up. That's the sad news. And again, we had that horrible weather last September, September of last year. And that was a convergence of El Niño. I won't go into explain that. Plus just plain old hot temperatures and we had all those hurricane threats that unfortunately may be a glimpse into the future. But what we're doing with these classrooms is our share. All we can do is our share to mitigate the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And when we have zero net classrooms, we are contributing, as it sounds, zero additional CO2 carbon dioxide into the atmosphere because we've reduced our energy use, our electricity use, and we've offset that little use with the photovoltaics. Now what we need to do is get the whole world along these lines. And there is hope. China used to be notorious for its coal burning plants. It is the leading solar energy producer in the world. And good old Texas. What does Texas care about clean energy? Well, guess what? Texas produces more clean energy than any other state. Why? Something called the West Texas Plains, which are sparsely populated. And there is a thermal condition which brings a steady flow of air through West Texas and then through Oklahoma and then through Nebraska and then into the Dakotas. So more and more you are seeing wind machines, wind machines, wind machines up there and nobody is protesting because there's nobody around there and they're hooking the grid lines up to these wind machines and they are massive and getting them to population centers. I talk about this to say that there is hope for clean energy. And here's just as I wrap up the fact that we are still largely dependent on oil for our electrical production but that's going down, down, down, down. And what's not included here is efficiency because you can't see efficiency the way you can see. Solar panels and so forth. But with this type of work, energy efficiency is going to take a great big bite out of that oil production. Our air will be cleaner, less CO2 and very healthy, very comfortable students in their zero net energy classrooms. And that already brings me to a close. Think Tech Hawaii, Code Green. See you next time.