Every day, our team here at Energy 1 works with renewable energy and building experts. We share our experience and expertise in an effort to learn from each other and get better and better at what we do.
It's an interesting line of work especially because we're learning new things all the time about how various green building and renewable energy technologies can work together to make a structure more operationally proficient, financially compelling in terms of overall energy usage/costs and environmentally sustainable.
That's why the REHAU MONTANA ecosmart house project is so exciting for us. The Energy 1 design team did their thing -- leading the engineering efforts from our office was Todd Nelson, who provided the lead on the overall mechanical system and energy model for the house. And now that the house is finished, a team of scientists from MSU is conducting extensive research to determine exactly how well the design works!
It's a true living laboratory of cutting edge building technologies. The idea is that the integration of specific systems can be studied, tested and evaluated at varying conditions, in both the built and natural environment to see what configuration creates the highest level of efficiency.
The results will be interesting to analyze given the dramatic weather patterns of SW Montana, and the relevant demand for both heating and cooling throughout the year. But once the research results are received, an entire industry will benefit from the excercise. We'll have specific, performance-related data on system configurations that will help determine the best approach to sustainable building design in our corner of the world and everywhere else.
