Aircuity helps Masdar Institute of Science and Technology realize significant energy and capital cost savings

ABU DHABI, UAE & NEWTON, USA: Aircuity, the smart airside efficiency company, recently completed the installation of its OptiNet system into the first phase of the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology campus buildings to help the university achieve significant first cost reductions and sustained energy savings in these facilities.

Masdar Institute, which is located in Masdar City, a cleantech cluster that aims to be one of the most sustainable cities in the world, is the Middle East’s first graduate research institution dedicated to alternative energy, environmental technologies, and sustainability.

Aircuity’s OptiNet system comprises both intelligent ventilation measurement and optimization technologies to cost effectively implement energy efficiency solutions. For example, Aircuity is helping to implement Demand Control Ventilation (DCV) in the university’s classrooms, conference rooms and library areas to vary outside air ventilation based on sensing occupancy and indoor environmental quality (IEQ).

Additionally, Masdar Institute is using Aircuity technology to implement Demand Based Control for laboratory ventilation. This varies the building’s use of outside air based on real-time analysis of the lab room environment. The ventilation flow is dynamically adjusted as needed to provide a safe lab environment while reducing the use of outside air on average by almost two thirds, to as low as 2 air changes per hour.

In the first phase of the Masdar Institute project, these two approaches will generate energy savings of slightly over 3,000 MWh or about 32.5 KWh per square foot, representing a 55 percent average reduction in the total HVAC energy consumption of the affected lab and non-lab areas. Additionally, this energy savings reduces the university’s solar PV capacity requirements by almost 1.5 megawatts.

“Leveraging state-of-the art energy efficiency technology like Aircuity is helping us to move toward our goal of making Masdar City one of the world’s most sustainable cities. Most significantly, it is helping us do so in a commercially viable manner,” said Alan Frost, director of Masdar City.

“Optimizing the use of fresh air in our facilities with Aircuity’s technology will significantly reduce our energy consumption, as well as our renewable energy requirements and cooling equipment sizing. This resulted in significant capital cost savings and will also provide a superior indoor environment.”

The first campus buildings comprise an area the size of a city block and are the first structures to be built in Abu Dhabi’s Masdar City. The city has been planned to support a growing population using the desert sun as an energy source. A 10 megawatt solar field has already been completed to help fuel construction, as well as Masdar’s temporary corporate offices, and is reportedly the largest such plant in the Middle East.

In addition to being a technology provider to the project, Aircuity also recommended an improved sequence of operation for the University’s labs based on recent changes in lab standards that Aircuity’s chairman helped implement.

These changes safely reduced the minimum flow rate of the lab fume hoods by over 60 percent, and alone represented annual energy savings of over 1,000 MWh and almost 0.5 megawatt of solar PV capacity requirement reduction.

“What Masdar Institute, Masdar City and the government of Abu Dhabi are striving to accomplish is nothing short of revolutionizing the sustainability of the world’s commercial buildings, and goes far beyond the scale of what anyone else has yet accomplished - even with net zero projects.” added Gordon Sharp, chairman, Aircuity.

“We are proud to be a part of such an important project and look forward to continuing to work together with Masdar on economically reducing their facilities’ carbon footprint and helping them become a platform for innovation and green technologies.”