Atlanta-based startup Joulea is part of a project team that will receive $1.5 million in funding from the Department of Energy to develop an Air Leakage Visualizer system. The ALV system is anticipated to significantly lessen building energy consumption by reducing the time it takes to sample a building for air leakage, the impact on building occupants and the cost of performing a leak detection test.
Joulea will work with the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology (NMIMT), Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the Air Barrier Association of America to develop and test the technology before deployment.
“Building air leakage is one of the largest operating expenses and energy wastes for commercial building owners and managers,” said Ramtin Motahar, CEO of Joulea. “This funding will aid the research that is crucial to developing this ALV system so that we can reduce the financial and environmental burden resulting from envelope leakage. Our next steps will be to implement this technology into Joulea’s processes in order to help our clients identify needed repairs and upgrades to their building systems, so they can meet their environmental, social and governance goals and increase net operating income.”
The funding comes from DOE’s Buildings Energy Efficiency Frontiers & Innovation Technologies (BENEFIT) program, in which $46 million was awarded to 29 projects across 15 states to develop advanced technologies and retrofit practices for buildings that will benefit occupants and the grid through efficient, affordable, sustainable and resilient building operation. The project was chosen through a competitive selection process that rigorously evaluated applications on their technical merit.
Building air leakage contributes to unnecessary energy consumption with an estimated four quads (1172 terawatt-hour) of energy loss per year in the United States alone. The ALV system is a beneficial option among existing air leakage detection technologies. ALV will include a set of cameras that will image the interior and exterior building environments with onboard image processing capability to produce real-time background-oriented schlieren (BOS) images. “BOS is a digital method to visualize the density variations in air. It is the same as when you see ‘road shimmer’ driving down a hot road in the summer, only here we will use digital cameras to measure the background distortion and quantify the hot or cold air leaking from a building,” said Dr. Michael Hargather, Professor of Mechanical Engineering at NMIMT and PI of the award.
“Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers have applied BOS to finding building leakage and conducted proof-of-concept experiments showing that BOS has promise to both locate and measure individual air leakage sites through the building envelope so that they can be efficiently sealed,” said Philip Boudreaux, ORNL’s principal investigator for the building air leak detector.
Identifying and repairing leaks through the building envelope can improve the energy efficiency, comfort, air quality and moisture durability of the building stock. The ALV system will integrate BOS imaging and thermal/infrared imaging on drone-based and manual platforms to identify and quantify air leakage sites through the building’s exterior and interior surfaces, therefore significantly reducing building energy consumption.
About Joulea:
Joulea is a revolutionary software platform that leverages the power of rocket science to reduce energy costs and consumption in commercial buildings. Founded by Georgia Tech alumnus Ramtin Motahar, Joulea provides commercial building owners and managers with an opX and capX Planner that has an embedded continuously calibrated building energy model that accounts for all building systems and external factors. This is in order to track carbon emissions, streamline reporting and compliance, optimize system performance and reduce overall portfolio energy costs. For more information, follow Joulea on LinkedIn and Twitter or visit the website at www.joulea.com.
