Paul Torcellini has over 30 years of experience examining how energy is used in buildings including delivery mechanisms, design, system integration, and operations. His focus is on creating buildings that have minimal energy consumption.
Paul received his undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts. He received a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering specializing in heat transfer and modeling of buildings and a Ph.D. in building controls from Purdue University (W. Lafayette, Indiana).
Paul is an ASHRAE Fellow has received two ASHRAE Technology Awards for his energy-efficient buildings work and has been a key contributor to the Advanced Energy Design Guide Series, published by ASHRAE as a collaborative effort of AIA, ASHRAE, IES, and USGBC. He has led the technical analysis of several of the guides and has chaired two of the guides including the Advanced Energy Design Guide for K-12 Schools: Achieving Zero Energy (January 2018), the Advanced Energy Design Guide for Small to Medium Office Buildings: Achieving Zero Energy (June 2019) and the Advanced Energy Design Guide for Small to Medium Office Buildings: Achieving Zero Energy (May 2022). He has been a speaker on two ASHRAE Webcasts and has been involved in several Society level efforts including MTGs, position documents, and Project Monitoring Subcommittees.
Paul has taught at Purdue University, University of Denver, Colorado School of Mines, Youngstown State University, and Eastern Connecticut State University.
Paul and his family live in a low-energy home in northeastern Connecticut and run a farm focused on soil restoration growing a variety of farm products. (See High Performing Buildings, Spring 2018 for more information on the house.)
The Game of Energy Savings: Playing your Cards Right.
Advanced Building Thermal Systems
Many options exist today for heating and cooling buildings including air and ground-based heat pump systems, dual fuel systems, and fossil fuel-based heating systems. This presentation will examine a newly revised thermal system guide developed by the National Laboratory of the Rockies looking at applications of current research for improving the efficiency of heating systems. The presentation will show configurations for multiple building types, solutions for cold weather, and addressing electrical limitations. Case studies will be included showing that the application of the concepts.
Learning Objectives
- Understand the technologies so that effective decisions can be made with respect to heating system configurations.
- Learn about best practices for integrating dual fuel heating equipment and related technologies into new and existing buildings.
- Identify pathways for effective decision making with different solution sets depending on climate, utility pricing, and other influencing factors.
- Gain confidence in advanced heating technologies becoming reality.
Performance Based Procurement for Outstanding Energy Performance
Owners often want buildings to have outstanding energy performance and design teams can help them achieve success. This presentation looks at the process of making decisions and how one organization motivated decision makers to create a building that uses half the energy of a conventional building without increasing the cost of design and construction. This look at procurement from an owner perspective yields lots of insights for building owners, operators as well as designers and contractors as the interest mounts to substantially reduce the building’s energy impact.
Learning Objectives:
- Explain a process that allows innovation and creativity in design without increasing overall costs
- Identify energy efficiency strategies that enable cost reductions, rather than cost increases
- Describe the percentages of energy end uses for a low-energy building
- Identify barriers that inhibit delivery of low-energy building designs.
Applying On-site Generation: What to know and what are the myths?
On-site generation can take on many forms including co-generation, on-side fossil fuel generation and renewable energy generation. Batteries storage is becoming more prevalent as building owners seek more choices for reducing energy consumption either by shaping their building loads or making choices about affordable energy options. This presentation will discuss different types of generation resources and their application to buildings and including integration with utility grids, rate structures, resiliency to utility outages, and opportunities to reduce utility costs.
- Describe different types of on-site generation and their application in buildings
- Distinguish between different types of utility rate structures and how design decisions can align with rate structures to reduce utility costs.
- Describe current strategies for integrating on-site generation into the built environment
- Understand ability to shape building loads to best use utility and on-site generation resources.
A Look at Personal Decisions to in Making Energy Efficiency Decisions in My Own Home—How Did I Spend Money as a Building’s Expert.
What decisions does a building’s expert make when building his own house for himself and his family? This look at the decision decisions made for creating a highly efficient home as well as implications to life-style will be discussed. The lecture will also examine the actual cost and energy data in making decisions on what technologies to use and what strategies made practical sense. As a bonus, the discussion will look at material selections, food choices, and using the land to help restore the environment. The message is about creating solutions that are applied to both our professional and personal lives.
- Identify innovations for creating a cost-effective highly efficient home
- Explain how design decisions impact occupancy behavior in a residential context.
- Understand goal setting and the design outcomes
- Describe a process for evaluating trade-offs between competing strategies to keep the house affordable
How Do Achieve Cost-Effective, Highly Efficient Buildings?
Many organizations have made goals to substantially reduce energy consumption of their building stock. Design teams are often asked to implement these goals on behalf of their clients. This leads to many questions including how to choose fuel sources, how to set energy targets, how to align on-site generation to better match building loads, and most importantly how to make a business case to change buildings. This lecture will give examples of companies making such goals and the creation of action plans to strive towards hitting corporate energy goals. The lecture will provide strategies to achieve the goals as well as map out what is still needed to make these buildings routine.
Learning Objectives:
- Describe a process for creating highly energy efficient buildings.
- Understand how building interacts with the building grid and be optimized to best use grid power resources.
- Investigate how to prioritize buildings in a portfolio to meet a portfolio level energy goal.
- Apply design concepts to create buildings that meet Energy Use Intensity goals and can shape the demand profile to maximize building and utility grid efficiency.