Between the Poles

Autodesk AEC HQ Building Awarded Eco Best of Year Award from Interior Design Magazine

Last night at an awards ceremony at the Guggenheim Museum in New York City, the Autodesk AEC Headquarters building in Waltham, Massachusetts was awarded a ‘Best of Year’ from Interior Design Magazine in the Eco category.

The AEC HQ building is a 65,000 square-foot office building in Waltham, Mass and has been LEED Platinum certified through the United States Green Building Council (USGBC).  The building is located at 1560 Trapelo Road in Waltham, Mass.  The interior was designed by KlingStubbins using and built by Tocci Building Companies using a BIM-based process.  This is the first project in New England to use the integrated project delivery (IPD) model, a new approach to design and construction that can accelerate project timelines.

Newly Renovated "Guide to Sustainable Design"

More than half of the buildings that will be standing in the year 2030 are already built, and the urgency to improve the efficiency of existing buildings as a means to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions is growing. Autodesk has just announced a “retrofitted” Guide to Sustainable Design.  The newly renovated Guide is designed to let building industry stakeholders select their profession and then walk through virtually all phases of a design or renovation/retrofit project to see how design choices affect energy efficiency, water efficiency and carbon emissions.  The Guide to Sustainable Design illustrates sustainable design principles and technologies for more energy-efficient buildings and environmentally conscious infrastructure projects.

Convergence and Sustainable Utility Infrastructure

One the important impacts of the current economic downturn is a massive increase in infrastructure spending by all levels of governments as part of economic stimulus spending.   One of the most important drivers for new infrastructure investment is the creation of a more sustainable infrastructure for energy, water, transportation, communications, and buildings, as the foundation for a new energy efficient, sustainable world economy.  An essential part of this worldwide infrastructure transformation is creating a high quality digital model that will enable us to operate and manage the new sustainable infrastructure efficiently.This is a summary of a recent article published in Geospatial Today (10/2009).

State of the World’s Infrastructure

Worldwide there is a growing concern about the state of infrastructure including roads, highways, railways, water and wastewater, pipelines, power, waste, telecommunications, and other types of infrastructure.  In the US the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) publishes a Report Card on American Infrastructure most recently in 2009. The 2009 ASCE Report Card estimates that a total investment of $2.2 trillion over five years is required to bring US infrastructure to an acceptable condition. 

Shrinking Workforce

Utilites are faced with an aging and shrinking workforce.  As a result productivity in the utility industry has stagnated.

Global Climate Change

The effort to tackle global climate change is accelerating.  The Copenhagen meeting on global climate change will begin to work toward an agreement to replace the Kyoto Accord next month.  In preparation for the Copenhagen meeting, China's State Council says China will reduce its carbon intensity 40 to 45 percent by the year 2020 as compared to 2005 levels.  President Obama is expected to make a provisional pledge to cut carbon dioxide emissions by about 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020. Canada's announced goal is 20% reduction in GHG by 2020, compared to 2006 levels.  And India and the United States have just agreed on a Memorandum of Understanding to increase cooperation on energy security, clean energy, and climate change.

Smart Utility Networks

Global climate change and increasing demand for electric power is motivating utilities to develop more intelligent networks.  But a smart grid requires an accurate, up to date digital model of the network infrastructure, and given the state of digital network models and data at many power utilities, this represents a major challenge for power utilities. 

Data Quality

One of the fundamental problems utilities are facing is the poor quality of their digital assets.  Poor data quality has serious implications for the organization such as delayed and unreliable reporting to regulators which can lead to fines and other financial penalties, poor operations productivity which directly impacts the bottom line, and poor response times for outages.  The most glaring symptoms of poor data quality are backlogged as-builts and poor productivity.

Model-based Design

 To enable engineers, owners and operators of network infrastructure to address the challenges of global climate change, aging infrastructure, aging workforce, and the demand for higher levels of reliability, new technologies are being introduced and adopted.  One of the most important that engineers are increasingly adopting is model-driven approach to design, often referred to simply as BIM (building information modeling).  Model-based design not only significantly reduces the cost of design and construction for new structures, but also promises to significantly reduce the downstream costs associated with operation and maintenance. 

3D Visualization

Once the preserve of gamers, 3D simulation technology is now an important tool used by engineers to experience a building or other structure during the design phase, before it is built.  3D simulation relies on many of the same 3D visualization and simulation technologies underlying computer games, and allows engineers to convey their designs more effectively, reduces the risk of major modifications to built structures, and enables optimization of buildings and infrastructure for their full life-cycle including operations and maintenance.

New Design Technologies and Utilities

The implication of these initiatives targeted at more sustainable networks and greater reliability are that our electric, gas, water, telecommunications and  other types of infrastructure is undergoing rehabilitation, and in some cases, complete replacement on a massive scale.  New design technologies are helping to address issues, providing tools designing new sustainable technologies, for sustainable design, and for increasing design and construction productivity to enable a shrinking workforce to become more efficient. Here's a couple of examples.

Sub-station Rehabilitation

 In North America alone there are over 13 000 sub-stations, many of which have exceeded their original design life.  In 2008, it was estimated that 81% of US and Canadian power utilities have sub-station rehabilitation or replacement projects underway.   By using model-based design, modern electrical design tools, and 3D visualization, Duke Energy is dramatically speeding up designing and redesigning sub-stations.  Arnold Fry of Duke Energy will be talking about this at Autodesk University.

Water Treatment Plant Expansion

When DeKalb County decided to double their water treatment capacity using innovative bioreactor membrane (MBR) technology, they were faced with a large, nearly one billion dollar project involving over 50 people and 10 disciplines.  Parsons, the firm selected to design the water treatment expansion, decided early on to take a model-based design approach to enable collaboration between the different design teams.  They also employed 3D visualization tools to ensure that the stakeholders, technical and non-technical, were able to participate in critical design decisions.  Asa Reese of Parsons is going to talk about this project at Autodesk University next week.

3D Design and the Millennial Generation

As the older generation of utility workers retires at an increasing rate, utility companies are faced with the challenge of attracting younger workers.  The Millennial generation, brought up on Wii's, PSP's, and Xbox's, is looking for challenging opportunities with leading edge technology that not only create a upwardly mobile career path, but also help preserve the environment.  The younger generation of utility workers are excited by and feel much more at home with 3D applications rather than traditional 2D design applications.  Utility companies are seeing the value in 3D model-based design not only for improved productivity but for attracting and retaining younger employees.

Digital Infrastructure for a Sustainable Economy

An essential part of the worldwide infrastructure transformation is creating and maintaining precise and reliable digital models that will enable us to operate and manage our new sustainable infrastructure efficiently.  Integrating precision engineering data, laser scanned point clouds, and traditional GIS data makes it possible to develop a precise synthetic environment that can be used to simulate the inside (utilities, HVAC systems, furniture, elevators, walls, doors, windows, and structural details), outside (aerial utilities, full city blocks of 3D detail, road access), and under (underground water, wastewater, gas, power, and telecommunications systems) of an urban environment creates an intelligent model that can be used for visualization, analysis, and simulation.  For example, urban simulation can be used to analyze the load impact of a new building on a utility network, the extent to which solar heating can be used to reduce emissions, and how much daylight will be available in interior spaces at different times of the day and of the year.

The coincidence of technical advances and government stimulus spending motivated by the economic downturn and global climate change is a unique historical opportunity is take advantage of this moment in history to create an intelligent, precision digital infrastructure for energy, water, transportation, communications, and buildings, as the foundation for a new energy efficient and low emissions world economy.

Iceland: Hydrogen as a Fuel Source for Ships

Iceland has been moving toward eliminating all use of fossil fuels by 2040.  One the important technologies that Iceland has been investing in is hydrogen.  For example, Iceland is investigating switching over to hydrogen vehicles and has signed an MOU with a number of well known international automobile manufacturers. There has been a successful hydrogen bus project with EU backing.  Another project that was carried out by Icelandic Hydrogen and has been very successful and has also had EU backing is fitting the Elding, a 125 ton  whale watching ship with a hydrogen fuel cell to run its two 50kW generators.  This project was so innovative that it was awarded an Autodesk Inventor of the Month Award.

Tidal Power Generation in the Bay of Fundy

According to the The Canadian Hydrographic Service the Bay of Fundy is tied with Ungava Bay for the highest tides in the world with a tide of 17 metres (55.8 feet), measured at Burntcoat Head in the Bay of Fundy.  During the 12.4 hour tidal period, 115 billion tonnes of water flow in and out of the bay.

An Irish firm OpenHydro intends to place a 10-metre turbine on a tripod in the Minas Passage off Parrsboro, Nova Scotia, in late October or early November.  The turbine is capable of generating one-megawatt of electrical power.  Nova Scotia Power, which is supporting this test project, foresees that tidal power generation could provide up to 10 % of Nova Scotia's power requirements with about 200 to 300 tidal turbines in the Bay of Fundy.

 

The Government of Nova Scotia and the Department of Fisheries have given environmental approval for tidal turbine test projects for three companies, Minas Basin Pulp and Power, Nova Scotia Power, and Clean Current (BC).

Green Rankings for Utilities

NEWSWEEK has published rankings of 500 companies scored according to green criteria, including environmental imapct score, green policies score, and green reputation score.  Newsweek worked with with three research companies to compile the rankings incluidng KLD Research & Analytics, which tracks environmental, social and governance data on companies worldwide; Trucost, which specializes in quantitative environmental performance measurement; and CorporateRegister.com, the world's largest online directory of social responsibility, sustainability and environmental reporting. 

The 500 companies included in the ranking are the largest U.S. companies as measured by revenue, market capitalization and number of employees.

The environmental impact score estimates the total cost of all environmental impacts of a corporation's global operations. The green policies score is an analytical assessment of a company's environmental policies and performance. The green reputation score is derived from an opinion survey of corporate social responsibility professionals, academics and other environmental experts. The overall Newsweek Green Score was calculated as the weighted sum of three Z-scores: 45 percent for the Environmental Impact Score, 45 percent for the Green Policies Score, and 10 percent for the Reputation Score.

Utility Green Rankings (company and green score)

1.PG&E → 79.77

2.Pepco Holdings → 75.07

3.Northeast Utilities → 74.45

4.NiSource → 72.08

5.Integrys Energy Group → 71.92

6.Consolidated Edison → 71.91

7.CenterPoint Energy → 71.75

8.Sempra Energy → 70.66

9.Spectra Energy → 69.38

10.Oneok → 68.46

11.Exelon → 67.96

12.Questar → 66.83

13.Pinnacle West Capital → 66.08

14.Atmos Energy → 65.47

15.Calpine → 65.43

16.UGI → 64.70

17.Edison International → 64.09

18.Public Service Enterprise Grp. → 62.96

19.Xcel Energy → 62.39

20.FPL Group → 61.01

21.Constellation Energy → 60.37

22.DTE Energy → 60.04

23.Entergy → 59.57

24.Wisconsin Energy → 59.37

25.Dominion Resources → 56.27

26.CMS Energy → 52.79

27.Scana → 51.57

28.AES → 47.89

30.PPL → 46.23

29.Progress Energy → 46.23

31.Duke Energy → 44.91

32.FirstEnergy → 43.15

33.Southern → 36.54

34.American Electric Power → 33.17

35.Ameren → 31.63

36.Allegheny Energy → 25.04

37.NRG Energy → 22.75

For those folks from California, Edison International is the parent of Southern California Edison and Edison Mission Group.

Telecom (excluding cable) is included in the technology sector along with general IT companies, and software companies (among which Adobe, Microsoft, and Autodesk are the top three).

Technology Rankings (company and green score)

1.Hewlett-Packard → 100.00

2.Dell →98.87

3.Intel → 95.12

4.IBM → 94.08

5.Applied Materials → 91.79

6.Cisco Systems → 88.59

7.Sun Microsystems → 88.11

8.Sprint Nextel → 88.06

9.Adobe Systems → 87.88

10.Advanced Micro Devices → 87.86

11.Motorola → 86.09

12.Texas Instruments → 85.89

13.Xerox → 84.12

14.Microsoft → 83.79

15.Virgin Media → 81.91

16.Autodesk → 80.72

17.Yahoo → 79.55

18.EMC → 79.35

19.Google → 78.80

20.Verizon Communications → 77.09

21.Seagate Technology → 76.25

22.Symantec → 76.22

23.AT&T → 75.45

24.Micron Technology → 75.40

25.Apple → 75.18

26.Qualcomm → 73.08

27.Oracle → 72.92

28.Analog Devices → 70.74

29.Pitney Bowes → 69.96

30.Harris → 69.22

31.Western Digital → 69.22

32.Intuit → 68.85

33.Qwest Communications → 68.65

34.SAIC → 68.34

35.Nvidia → 68.32

36.Juniper Networks → 67.84

37.NetApp → 67.17

38.Corning → 66.91

39.MetroPCS Communications → 66.85

40.Broadcom → 65.78

41.KLA-Tencor → 65.61

42.Computer Sciences → 65.59

43.CA → 65.46

44.NII Holdings → 64.45

45.Windstream → 64.42

46.Marvell Technology Group → 62.50

47.Citrix Systems → 61.97

48.Ingram Micro →61.60

49.Cognizant Technology → 60.49

50.BMC Software →60.34

51.American Tower → 59.99

52.Cerner → 59.39

53.McAfee → 59.16

BIM and Sustainability

I blogged earlier about the series of articles by Terry Bennett that talks about sustainability from a civil engineering perspective and assesses the impact of building information modeling (BIM).

In the second part of his series of articles on Putting the Earth Back Into the Balance Sheet, Terry Bennett makes the point that advances in model-based technology, like BIM, using consistent, coordinated information have made sustainable design practices both practical and economically feasibl for civil engineers.  As a result, public/private partnerships are being formed around the world to create a more sustainable infrastructure.

In his final installment, Terry talks about the business benefits of a model-based design, or BIM, approach to sustainable design for civil engineers.  These include helping clients reduce material, water, open land needs and energy costs, making it easier to limit waste, minimize energy usage, and reduce the overall carbon and water footprints, limit potential liability, and help meet regulatory and certification requirements, for example LEED certitifcation.

California to Require 33% Renewable Energy by 2020 ?

The California assembly passed bills on the last day of the legislative session to increase the current 20% by 2010 Renewables Portfolio Standard (RPS) to 33% by 2020.  But it is reported that Governor Schwarzenegger plans to veto the legislation.  Reportedly Schwarzenegger's office said he will institute the quota through an executive order instead.  One of the issues about the bills is that a limit is set on the amount of renewable power that can come from outside the state's borders. (Image SEGS)

Generating Electricity with Speed Bumps

Speed bumps that generate electricity as cars drive over them are to be introduced in the UK as part of a pilot in London.  The bumps are comprised of a series of panels set in a pad on the road. As cars drive over them, the panels are depressed and then released moving a cog under the road. The cog turns a motor which produces mechanical energy. It is estimated that a steady stream of traffic driving over a bump can generate 10-36kW of power.  It is believed that with a steady traffic flow, four of the bumps would power all the street lights, traffic lights and road signs for a mile-long stretch of street. (Image Wikipedia)

2.6 GW of Concentrated Solar Power Capacity to be Built in California

Some time ago California passed legislation that requires the state's power utility companies to get 20% of their power from renewable sources by 2010.  This has created a massive opportunity for companies with solar power generation technology.  I blogged about a Spanish company that built and is building concentrated solar power (CSP) generation facilities near Seville and well as US projects in California and Nevada. 

A California company, BrightSource Energy, has signed contracts with Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E) and Southern California Edison (SCE) for 1.31 GW and 1.3 GW of solar power generation capacity, respectively.  BrightSource's technical team includes engineers who built the SEGS solar-thermal power plants in California in the 1980s. Both SCE and PG&E will purchase electricity from these power plants, which will be owned and operated by BrightSource.  BrightSource plans to build the first 100-megawatt power plant in the Mojave Desert near Ivanpah, Calif. The first project could come online by 2013. BrightSource expects to complete the rest of the power projects within six to seven years.

BrightSource Energy has just won a project with Chevron to use its solar technology to produce steam for industrial purposes, but not for power generation, in central California.