We’re trying something different this year. Finding ourselves yet again unable to bend the time-space continuum so we could give you print coverage of the AHR Expo and winter ASHRAE meeting in February’s issue, we decided to go ahead and serve up two features of more in-depth coverage in March.

So managing editor James Siegel will take you on a tour of the twelve AHR Innovation Awards category winners —  looking not only into the winning products but at trends and tech developments as seen by the teams that worked on them.

Meanwhile, I focused on a couple of ASHRAE events. A forum on the prospect of a potential optional standard for net zero buildings was an interesting open discussion that opened some eyes. The next morning’s ASHRAE press breakfast featured two PNNL staff members presenting a deeper dive into the changes and expected benefits in last year’s ASHRAE 90.1-2016 revision.

Both articles technically cover recent events, but those events really point toward the future of the industry, so I hope you’ll take a few minutes to check them out.

SPEAKING OF BREAKFAST …

It’s not the most important meal of the day just because an AHR day is usually very long. It’s also where a fair amount of good info gets disseminated each day. One example: Danfoss held a media breakfast that included interesting remarks from Mark Menzer, a policy veteran who handles public affairs for the company in North America.

As I touched on last month, this industry wasn’t immune from reverberations following recent elections, and Menzer gave a concise but interesting overview from a regulatory perspective.

I’ll take the excuse to dust off our ES blog to recap them, so swing over to the blog under the Columns dropdown on our homepage at ESmagazine.com. I’ll have it up by the time you read this.

VENTILATION VALIDATION

While we’re at the website, it seems engineers like solving stuff and testing their knowledge, which is why we rolled out a new online quiz section for you last month. We just missed being able to mention it in the February issue, though, so I’m leaving the debut quiz up through March, too.

For this special occasion, we were pleased to enlist the specialists at Air Movement and Control Association International (www.amca.org). Michael Ivanovich (Senior Director, Industry Relations) and Joe Brooks (Director of Publications and Standards) joined forces to start us off with a six-question quiz on air movement. The nice interface will get you through the quiz and to the results in maybe a minute, for an enjoyable but professional mind-sharpening break.

Admittedly, our online special occasion is a drop in the bucket compared to this one: AMCA is celebrating its 100^th anniversary this year. So in addition to appreciating the quiz participation, we’d like to congratulate the association and its 360 members. In April, we’ll roll over to part two of AMCA’s contribution with a few questions focusing on air control. But for now, drop by our homepage and look for the quiz button toward the upper left corner to start with part one.

ES WEBINARS BOX

Register for our free webinars at http://webinars.esmagazine.com, where registered users can also view any webinar from the last year on demand in our archive.

Kohler Webinar Series 2017

Presented by Julius Neudorfer

April 6

Part 2: High-Availability Data Center Backup Power Schemes

Future installments

June 8 / October 12 / December 12

INDUSTRY EVENTS

2017

March 22-23

Globalcon 2017

Philadelphia

www.globalconevent.com

April 12-13

Northwest Facilities

Portland, OR

http://www.fenw.facilitiesexpo.com/   

April 24-27

CxEnergy 2017

Orlando, FL

September 27-29

2017 ASHRAE Building Performance Analysis Conference

Atlanta