High-tech intelligent windows bring energy efficiency home

We have all heard about low-hanging fruit, ready to be plucked. Well, last Friday, U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Secretary Steven Chu pushed the analogy even further.

“Energy efficiency isn’t just low-hanging fruit, it’s fruit lying on the ground,” he said as he announced a $72 million conditional loan guarantee to SAGE Electrochromics, a Faribault, Minn.-based company which produces electronically “tintable” glass for use in building windows and skylights.

The loan guarantee, made through section 1703 of Title XVII of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, will support the financing of the construction and operation of a 250,000 square-foot, high-volume manufacturing facility to produce SageGlass® for commercial use. While SAGE already has a low-volume production facility on site, this loan guarantee will allow it to expand production and lower costs.

To date, SageGlass® is the world’s only commercially available, electronically tintable window glass. Company CEO and President John Van Dine explained that the glass allows natural light in while controlling unwanted solar heat and glare. The technology consists of a series of thin ceramic material layers deposited onto sheets of glass. This, in essence, forms an electrochromic device that allows the user to switch the window, using a low-voltage electrical current, between its normal clear state and a highly tinted state. “We focused on glass, and re-imagined it,” he said.

Van Dine explained that the technology “harvests” natural daylight and heat in buildings, and eliminates sunlight glare while preserving the view (the very reason we strategically place windows in buildings in the first place). “Approximately 20 billion feet of window area is installed every year around the world,” he said. “This technology can save one-eighth of all energy used in buildings throughout the year.”

This isn’t just a pie-in-the-sky estimate on Van Dine’s part. SAGE has cooperative agreements with both the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), both part of the DOE lab network. The one-eighth savings figure – equivalent to about 5 percent of the nation’s total energy budget – came straight from the NREL.

The LBNL has stated that it considers electrochromic glazings to be the next major advance in energy-efficient window technology, with the ability to help to transform windows and skylights from energy liabilities to energy savers in buildings. The lab has also said that energy lost through conventional windows accounts for approximately 30 percent of heating and cooling energy, and that this technology “could potentially reduce overall cooling loads for commercial buildings by up to 20 percent by lowering peak power demand, and may reduce lighting costs by up to 60 percent while providing building occupants with more natural daylight and greater comfort.” Further, LBNL said this technology “also has the potential to reduce building heating and air conditioning equipment size by up to 25 percent, resulting in construction cost savings.”

The new facility will provide more than 200 jobs during its construction and, once completed, will add 160 full-time green manufacturing and technology jobs.

From a state that prides itself on the introduction of cutting-edge ideas and technology, this is yet another step along that path. “We brought the world everything from the pacemaker to the Post-it Note,” Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) pointed out.

The section 1703 loan guarantee program is not a stimulus-funded program. Section 1703 loan guarantees provide financing for projects which employ new or significantly improved technologies that avoid, reduce or sequester air pollutants or anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases. The SAGE announcement joins six other conditional commitments issued by the DOE under this program since March 2009.

This is the kind of energy efficiency I can really sink my teeth into – the kind that employs breaking-edge technology to effect long-term energy savings.

I encourage your comments, and would like to hear your thoughts on this. Please use the comment button here, e-mail me at krowland@energycentral.com, or telephone me directly at 720-331-3555.