Center for Building Energy Research at ISU

Overview

The Center for Building Energy Research (CBER), focuses on strategies to reduce energy consumption in buildings using effective building design and efficient and renewable energy sources and technologies.

The Center supports interdisciplinary and collaborative research between disciplines such as architecture, agriculture, geological and atmospheric sciences, business, mechanical, construction and electrical engineering, material science and engineering as well as interior design, environmental psychology and behavioral science.

Involvement with Green & Main

CBER is conducting independent research to evaluate the energy efficiency measures taken by the Green & Main retrofit project at 800 19th Street.

The research team is: 1) collecting data on the complex processes that occur between builders, conservation agencies, architects, developers and energy modeling experts to develop an economically viable strategy for energy efficiency retrofit in a small scale commercial building in a historic neighborhood, and 2) gathering a comprehensive set of relevant energy and comfort-performance data that will evaluate the measures taken by the team to achieve their goal.

CBER has obtained seed funding from the Iowa Energy Center to evaluate the project’s cost effectiveness. During the construction phase, equipment will be installed to monitor the building’s real-time energy consumption for heating, cooling, ventilation and electricity plug loads.