A big thanks for taking a minute and stopping by the new blog. As you’ll see, we’ve got a couple of good pieces to get us rolling from two engineers. Don’t be shy with the follow-up questions or comments; other engineers will also benefit from whatever back-and-forth we generate here.

You can look forward to more posts and more authors as time goes on. Want to see something specific? Have an interesting item to pass along? Or maybe your firm would like to be a recurring contributor here (free exposure, etc.)? That’s all good — let me know at beverlyr@bnpmedia.com.

In the meantime, congratulations to past ES author Stephen Hamstra, P.E. for a recent win in the ASHRAE Technology Awards. Hamstra, who is the CTO for Greensleeves, received “first place in the new educational facilities category for the 300 Davis Street Building.”

Let’s cut to the press release for some noteworthy project elements, shall we?

• A geothermal heat pump energy plant consisting of the magnetic-bearing chiller, pumps, variable speed drives and controls was factory-assembled at an ISO-9001 facility and shipped to the site in portions for site assembly. This significantly reduced construction and commissioning time as well as risk related to varying on-site conditions and quality control.

•  A control system using anticipatory predictive algorithms for the geothermal heat exchanger (GHX) seasonal and daily pre-conditioning to minimize energy use in lieu traditional “real-time” control that triggers closed-circuit cooling tower (CCCT) operation when the GHX temperature simply exceeds a setpoint. This means that the CCCT may operate during the night or during winter months to pre-condition the GHX for summer cooling and minimize summer daytime CCCT operation. Significant reductions in CCCT energy use and water use can be achieved by winter in lieu of summer operation due to lower ambient temperatures. The innovation is a control system that prevents excessive heat dumping in the winter. The control system measures and “learns” the actual building load imposed on the GHX and adjusts the preconditioning algorithms in relation to this intelligent model.

• Use of radiant cooling and active chilled beam sensible cooling via ground temperature water in lieu of chiller operation for much of the year.

 We’ll have the other winners in February’s print issue, but I wanted to take a minute and acknowledge him for the recognition for a job well done.