From Berkeley Lab EETD - A Q&A with Cindy Regnier, Manager of the Facility for Low Energy eXperiments in Buildings (FLEXLAB)

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The Facility for Low Energy eXperiments in Buildings (FLEXLAB) is designed to be a national focal point for developing, simulating and testing energy-efficient technologies and strategies for buildings. FLEXLAB users will conduct research and develop technologies at FLEXLAB on single components as well as whole-building integrated design and operation aimed at substantially lowering the energy use, and improving the comfort and performance of both new and existing buildings. FLEXLAB is a facility of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Environmental Energy Technologies Division (EETD).

In the following Q&A, Cindy Regnier, FLEXLAB’s manager, discusses FLEXLAB’s capabilities, and how its users will be able to use the facility when it opens.

How is the construction of FLEXLAB going? When will it be ready for users?

Construction is going well. At this point, FLEXLAB is on time and on budget, and construction should be complete in early 2014, including the commissioning process. Following that, we will put the facility through a calibration process to determine testbed accuracies, begin testing the data acquisition system and gathering baseline data from its many sensors.

Who do you expect will be the primary users of FLEXLAB when it is completed? And what needs does FLEXLAB address for these users?

The diversity of users is broad—maybe broader than you think. FLEXLAB can address the energy efficiency needs of utilities, federal and state research programs, manufacturers, building owners and the AECO [architecture, engineering, construction and owner-operated] community.

Read the rest here: http://eetd.lbl.gov/news/article/56845/a-qa-with-cindy-regnier-manager