Are most homebuyers interested in purchasing a home that saves 90% over a traditional home on heating and cooling costs and requires only a small active heating system the size of a hairdryer? The Passivhaus movement is an exciting building design concept that offers tremendous energy savings due to reliance on passive heating systems. Europe is embracing the concept with between ten and fifteen thousand houses already built and governmental support of mandating the standard. The Passivhaus Institut in Darmstadt was formed in 1996 to promote and control passive house design and the group only recently formed the Passive House Institute US (PHIUS) to reach out directly to the US building market. It is slow to gain momentum, but holds promise for the US market in the future.
Can Off-peak Air Conditioning (OPAC) technology, improve the green energy profile of data centers? One of the major energy consumption categories of data centers is their need to keep all of their rows of rack mounted servers operating within their critical temperature parameters. Many various techniques are increasingly being adopted by data centers around the world in order to lower their overall cooling needs. An additional technology exists that I believe can help data centers improve their energy usage profiles by shifting energy demand to off-peak hours and in so doing significantly lower their energy consumption during critical periods of peak demand. Off-peak Air Conditioning (OPAC) technology is a way for data centers to improve their peak energy demand profile.
