The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) is an ANSI-accredited continuous-maintenance standards developer (a major contributor to what we call a regulatory product development “stream”). Continuous maintenance means that changes to titles in its catalog can change in as little as 30-45 days. This is meaningful to jurisdictions that require conformance to the “latest” version of ASHRAE 90.1
Among the leading titles in its catalog is ASHRAE 90.1 Energy Standard for Sites and Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings. Standard 90.1 has been a benchmark for commercial building energy codes in the United States and a key basis for codes and standards around the world for more than 35 years. Free access to ASHRAE 90.1 version is available at the link below:
Chapter 9: Lighting, begins on Page 148, and therein lie the tables that are the most widely used metrics (lighting power densities) by electrical and illumination engineers for specifying luminaires and getting them wired and controlled “per code”. Many jurisdictions provide access to this Chapter without charge. Respecting ASHRAE’s copyright, we will not do so here but will use them during today’s Illumination Colloquium, 16:00 UTC.
Keep in mind that recently ASHRAE expanded the scope of 90.1 to include energy usage in the spaces between buildings:
Education industry facility managers, energy conservation workgroups, sustainability officers, electric shop foreman, electricians and front-line maintenance professionals who change lighting fixtures, maintain environmental air systems are encouraged to participate directly in the ASHRAE consensus standard development process.
Univerzita Karlova
We also maintain ASHRAE best practice titles as standing items on our Mechanical, Water, Energy and Illumination colloquia. See our CALENDAR for the next online meeting; open to everyone.
Issue: [Various]
Category: Mechanical, Electrical, Energy Conservation, Facility Asset Management, US Department of Energy, #SmartCampus
Colleagues: Mike Anthony, Larry Spielvogel, Richard Robben
Best wiring safety practice for the illumination of educational settlement occupancies is scattered throughout the National Electrical Code with primary consideration for wiring fire safety:
Article 410 – Covers the installation of luminaires (fixtures), lampholders, and lamps, including requirements for wiring, grounding, and support.
Article 210 – Covers branch circuit requirements, including those for lighting circuits in dwellings and commercial buildings.
Article 220 – Provides guidelines for calculating lighting loads.
The renovated Schwarzman Center at Yale now features dynamic new communal areas, a refreshed historic dining hall and eye-catching exterior lighting, enhancing the campus experience.
The American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) is an ANSI-accredited continuous-maintenance standards developer (a major contributor to what we call a regulatory product development “stream”). Continuous maintenance means that changes to its consensus products can change in as little as 30 days so it is wise to keep pace.
Among the leading titles in its catalog is ASHRAE 90.1 Energy Standard for Sites and Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings. Standard 90.1 has been a benchmark for commercial building energy codes in the United States and a key basis for codes and standards around the world for more than 35 years. Free access to ASHRAE 90.1 version is available at the link below:
Redlines are released at a fairly brisk pace — with 30 to 45 day consultation periods. A related title — ASHRAE 189.1 Standard for the Design of High Performance Green Buildings — first published in 2009 and far more prescriptive in its scope heavily references parent title 90.1 so we usually them as a pair because 189.1 makes a market for green building conformance enterprises. Note the “extreme prescriptiveness” (our term of art) in 189.1 which has the practical effect of legislating engineering judgement, in our view.
Education estate managers, energy conservation workgroups, sustainability officers, electric shop foreman, electricians and front-line maintenance professionals who change lighting fixtures, maintain environmental air systems are encouraged to participate directly in the ASHRAE consensus standard development process.
We also maintain ASHRAE best practice titles as standing items on our Mechanical, Water, Energy and Illumination colloquia. See our CALENDAR for the next online meeting; open to everyone.
Issue: [Various]
Category: Mechanical, Electrical, Energy Conservation, Facility Asset Management, US Department of Energy, #SmartCampus
Colleagues: Mike Anthony, Larry Spielvogel, Richard Robben
* Many standards-developing organizations aim to broaden their influence by entering the product standard and certification domain. Although our primary focus is on interoperability standards (within a system of interoperable products), we also consider market dynamics when product performance specifications are incorporated by reference into public law.
We use the term “backup” power system to convey the complexity of electrical power sources when the primary source is not used; either as a scheduled or an unscheduled event. Best practice literature in this domain has been relatively stable, even though challenged by newer primary source of power technologies. We are running our daily colloquium in parallel with the recurring 4 times monthly meetings of the IEEE Education & Healthcare Facilities Committee. You are welcomed to join us with the login credentials at the upper right of our home page.
Should every campus building generate its own power? Sustainability workgroups are vulnerable to speculative hype about net-zero buildings and microgrids. We remind sustainability trendsniffers that the central feature of a distributed energy resource–the eyesore known as the university steam plant–delivers most of the economic benefit of a microgrid. [Comments on Second Draft due April 29th] #StandardsMassachusetts
“M. van Marum. Tweede vervolg der proefneemingen gedaan met Teyler’s electrizeer-machine, 1795” | An early energy storage device | Massachusetts Institute of Technology Libraries
We have been following the developmental trajectory of a new NFPA regulatory product — NFPA 855 Standard for the Installation of Stationary Energy Storage Systems — a document with ambitions to formalize the fire safety landscape of the central feature of campus microgrids by setting criteria for minimizing the hazards associated with energy storage systems.
The fire safety of electric vehicles and the companion storage units for solar and wind power systems has been elevated in recent years with incidents with high public visibility. The education industry needs to contribute ideas and data to what we call the emergent #SmartCampus;an electrotechnical transformation — both as a provider of new knowledge and as a user of the new knowledge.
Transcripts of technical deliberation are linked below:
Comment on the 2026 revision received by March 27, 2025 will be heard at the NFPA June 2025 Expo through NFPA’s NITMAM process.
University of Michigan | Average daily electrical load across all Ann Arbor campuses is on the order of 100 megawatts
A fair question to ask: “How is NFPA 855 going to establish the standard of care any better than the standard of care discovered and promulgated in the NFPA 70-series and the often-paired documents NFPA 110 and NFPA 111?” (As you read the transcript of the proceedings you can see the committee tip-toeing around prospective overlaps and conflicts; never a first choice).
Suffice to say, the NFPA Standards Council has due process requirements for new committee projects and, obviously, that criteria has been met. Market demand presents an opportunity to assemble a new committee with fresh, with new voices funded by a fresh set of stakeholders who, because they are more accustomed to advocacy in open-source and consortia standards development platforms, might have not been involved in the more rigorous standards development processes of ANSI accredited standards developing organizations — specifically the NFPA, whose members are usually found at the top of organization charts in state and local jurisdictions. For example we find UBER — the ride sharing company — on the technical committee. We find another voice from Tesla Motors. These companies are centered in an industry that does not have the tradition of leading practice discovery and promulgation that the building industry has had for the better part of two hundred years.
Our interest in this standard lies on both sides of the education industry — i.e. the academic research side and the business side. For all practical purposes, the most credible, multi-dimensional and effective voice for lowering #TotalCostofOwnership for the emergent smart campus is found in the tenure of Standards Michigan and its collaboration with IEEE Education & Healthcare Facilities Committee (E&H). You may join us sorting through the technical, economic and legal particulars and day at 11 AM Eastern time. The IEEE E&H Committee meets online every other Tuesday in European and American time zones; the next meeting on March 26th. All meetings are open to the public.
University of California San Diego Microgrid
You are encouraged to communicate directly with Brian O’Connor, the NFPA Staff Liaison for specific questions. We have some of the answers but Brian is likely to have all of them. CLICK HERE for the NFPA Directory. Additionally, NFPA will be hosting its Annual Conference & Expo, June 17-20 in San Antonio, Texas; usually an auspicious time for meeting NFPA staff working on this, and other projects.
The prospect of installing of energy storage technologies at every campus building — or groups of buildings, or in regions — is clearly transformational if the education facilities industry somehow manages to find a way to drive the cost of operating and maintaining many energy storage technologies lower than the cost of operating and maintaining a single campus distributed energy resource. The education facility industry will have to train a new cadre of microgrid technology specialists who must be comfortable working at ampere and voltage ranges on both sides of the decimal point that separates power engineers from control engineers. And, of course, dynamic utility pricing (set by state regulatory agencies) will continue to be the most significant independent control variable.
Finding a way to make all this hang together is the legitimate work of the academic research side of the university. We find that sustainability workgroups (and elected governing bodies) in the education industry are vulnerable to out-sized claims about microgrids and distributed energy resources; both trendy terms of art for the electrotechnical transformation we call the emergent #SmartCampus.
We remind sustainability trendsniffers that the central feature of a distributed energy resource — the eyesore known as the university steam plant — bears most of the characteristics of a microgrid. In the videoclip linked below a respected voice from Ohio State University provides enlightenment on this point; even as he contributes to the discovery stream with a study unit.
Ohio State University McCracken Power Plant
Issue: [16-131]
Category: District Energy, Electrical, Energy, Facility Asset Management, Fire Safety, Risk Management, #SmartCampus, US Department of Energy
Colleagues: Mike Anthony, Bill Cantor ([email protected]). Mahesh Illindala
Today our focus turns to outdoor electric deicing and snow melting wiring systems identified as suitable for the environment and installed in accordance with the manufacturer’s instructions. They work silently to keep snow load from caving in roofs and icicles falling from gutters onto pedestrian pathways.
While the voltage and ampere requirement of the product itself is a known characteristic, the characteristic 0f the wiring pathway — voltage, ampere, grounding, short circuit, disconnect and control — is relatively more complicated and worthy of our attention. Articles 426-427 of the National Electrical Code is the relevant part of the NEC
We hold Articles 427 in the middle of our priority ranking for the 2023 NEC. We find that the more difficult issues for this technology is the determination of which trade specifies these systems — architectural, electrical, or mechanical; covered in previous posts. Instead, most of our time will be spent getting IEEE consensus products in step with it, specifically ANSI/IEEE 515 and IEEE 844/CSA 293.
Comments on the Second Draft of the 2026 NEC will be received until April 18th.
We collaborate with the IEEE Education & Healthcare Facility Committee which meets online 4 times per month in European and American time zones. Since a great deal of the technical basis for the NEC originates with the IEEE we will also collaborate with IEEE Standards Coordinating Committee 18 whose members are charged by the IEEE Standards Association to coordinate NFPA and IEEE consensus products.
Issue: [19-151]
Category: Electrical, Energy
Colleagues: Mike Anthony, Jim Harvey, Kane Howard, Jose Meijer
We were doing microgrids before microgrids were cool. We did not call our school boiler plants or campus district energy systems “microgrids” until the EPACT flooded the electrical power industry with a new cadre of policy makers, regulators and litigators and we were forced into a vocabulary upgrade.
We resume our engagement (and advocacy) for a few concepts which have tracked in the NFPA and IEEE standards development catalogs since the early 1990’s:
Nudge development of the National Electrical Code to recognize that loss of electrical power presents (i.e. reliability, availability) a greater hazard, and more frequent hazard, than wiring fire hazard.
The application of stand-alone AC to DC inverters in the 100 – 1000 watt range to convert DC power from an automobile to households. A portable vehicle to home 120 VAC outlet strip is effectively a “microgrid” and costs less than $100 not including the extension cords.
Expansion of the hybrid vehicle fittings with a built-in inverter to provide power to households in the 1000-2000 watt range. In contemporary parlance this arrangement is now referred to as “vehicle to home” (different than vehicle to grid)
Relaxation of NEC prohibitions against the sharing of residential backup generators and electric storage equipment between two or more separate houses. This can reduce cost significantly. Earthing, ground fault, disconnect, overcurrent protection can easily be solved if the vertical incumbents we describe in our ABOUT stop voting against us in the National Electrical Code
Stepping up the backup power systems that maintain the needed power for neighborhood internet access. Not all students and faculty live on campus.
Policy makers and regulators should think in terms of setting standards for 10-day, 30-day and 90-day survivability contingencies to limit civil unrest.
Preservation of contingencies with a judicious combination of absorption and electric chillers no matter what the electric rate. During a major regional contingency power is priceless.
Promote a “cultural change” among specifiers and university design guideline writers to permit use of aluminum wiring which cost 1/3 less than copper wiring. Use of aluminum wiring for backup “swing feeders” at medium voltage reduces the cost of an additional contingency by 2/3rds.
Reduce National Electrical Code circuit sizing rules so that distribution transformers within buildings can be reduced, thereby reducing material, heat waste and the reduction of wet-stacking in backup generators which reduces reliability.
This should be enough for an hour. We continue the conversation 4 times monthly with the IEEE Education & Healthcare Facilities Committee. Feel free to join us today with the login credentials at the upper right of our home page.
Mark your calendar for the Microgrid Knowledge Conference session, “Benefits of an Off-grid Microgrid-enabled Community”. This panel will describe the residential site, microgrid, fit to the city’s sustainability goals, and benefits & challenges of going off-grid. Register now! pic.twitter.com/hsAKrERIkj
Abstract: Increasing distributed topology design implementations, uncertainties due to solar photovoltaic systems generation intermittencies, and decreasing battery costs, have shifted the direction towards integration of battery energy storage systems (BESSs) with photovoltaic systems to form renewable microgrids (MGs). Specific benefits include, but are not limited to, seamless switching and islanding operations during outages and ancillary grid services. The evolution of battery chemistries and other components has also further enhanced practicality; however, developing these multifaceted MGs involves complexity in the design process. Consequently, stakeholders rely on connection standards and operational requirements to guarantee reliable and safe grid-connected operations.
This paper presents a technical overview of battery system architecture variations, benchmark requirements, integration challenges, guidelines for BESS design and interconnection, grid codes and standards, power conversion topologies, and operational grid services. In addition, a comprehensive review of the control strategies for battery equalization, energy management systems, communication, control of multiple BESSs, as well as a discussion on protection blinding and intentional islanding using BESSs is also provided. Finally, a discussion of the islanded and black start operation results for time-based analysis and standard validation of a 3MW/9MWh BESS in a grid-connected MG at the Florida International University (FIU) Engineering Campus is presented.
“Landscape with a Farm House and Windmill” (1680) / Jacob Isaaksz van Ruisdael
We have always taken a forward-looking approach to the National Electrical Code (NEC) because there is sufficient supply of NEC instructors and inspectors and not enough subject matter experts driving user-interest ideas into it. Today we approach the parts of the 2023 NEC that cover wiring safety for microgrid systems; a relatively new term of art that appropriates safety and sustainability concepts that have existed in electrotechnology energy systems for decades.
Turn to Part II of Article 705 Interconnected Electric Power Production Sources:
You will notice that microgrid wiring safety is a relatively small part of the much larger Article 705 Content. There were relatively minor changes to the 2017 NEC in Section 705.50 — but a great deal of new content regarding Microgrid Interconnection Devices, load side connections, backfeeding practice and disconnecting means — as can be seen in the transcripts of Code-Making Panel 4 action last cycle:
Keep in mind that the NEC says nothing (or nearly very little, in its purpose stated in Section 90.2) about microgrid economics or the life cycle cost of any other electrical installation. It is the claim about economic advantages of microgrids that drive education facility asset management and energy conservation units to conceive, finance, install, operate and — most of all — tell the world about them.
In previous posts we have done our level best to reduce the expectations of business and finance leaders of dramatic net energy savings with microgrids — especially on campuses with district energy systems. Microgrids do, however, provide a power security advantage during major regional contingencies — but that advantage involves a different set of numbers.
Note also that there is no user-interest from the education facility industry — the largest non-residential building construction market in the the United States — on Panel 4. This is not the fault of the NFPA, as we explain in our ABOUT.
The 2023 NEC was released late last year.
The 2026 revision cycle is in full swing with public comment on the First Draft receivable until August 24, 2024. Let’s start formulating our ideas using the 2023 CMP-4 transcripts. The link below contains a record of work on the 2023 NEC:
We collaborate with the IEEE Education & Healthcare Facility Committee which meets online 4 times per month in European and American time zones. Since a great deal of the technical basis for the NEC originates with the IEEE we will also collaborate with other IEEE professional societies.
Mike Anthony’s father-in-law and son maintaining the electrical interactive system installed in the windmill that provides electricity to drive a pump that keeps the canal water at an appropriate level on the family farm near Leeuwarden, The Netherlands.
Today we break down the literature for exterior and interior pathways in education communities. We limit the term “pathway” to refer to human pathways (as in egress and ingress paths); not wiring or piping pathways. Maximum distance of travel from within a building and along an egress path toward safety is a core topic in building safety literature. Starting 2023 we will break down coverage of subject catalogs and bibliographies:
Pathways 100: Survey of all titles for both the exterior and interior environments
Pathways 200: Review of codes, standards and guidelines for building interiors
Pathways 300: Review of codes, standards and guidelines campus environment outside the buildings; all seasons
Pathways 500: Review of noteworthy litigation. Campus pathways are rich in possibilities for legal actions so we will refresh our understanding of the landmark decisions.
IFC §909.21.6 Proposal FS118-21 Pressurization systems for elevator pathways (now being discussed during the ICC Group A Committee Action Hearings in September)
American Society of Civil Engineers (roads, sidewalks)
We might venture onto the minefield of sensitivities about signage: too much, too many, too big, too small? There are signs everywhere in academia.
Many titles in the foregoing list are inspired by legal requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act administered by the US Department of Justice
As usual, we’ll only have time to identify the titles and concepts in motion and set up a separate markup session. Open to everyone; use the login credentials at the upper right of our home page.
“The Via Appia: A Case Study in the Political Geography of Imperialism” Hannah Friedman. This article, published in the Journal of Historical Geography in 2011, examines the Appian Way as a product of Roman imperialism and a reflection of Roman attitudes toward the landscape and its inhabitants. The author draws on both textual and archaeological evidence to explore the road’s impact on the regions it passed through.
“The Appian Way: The Road that Built the Roman Empire” by Richard Talbert – Cambridge University Press 2012. A a comprehensive study of the Appian Way and its significance to the Roman Empire. The author draws on a wide range of archaeological and historical evidence to explore the road’s construction, use, and legacy.
New update alert! The 2022 update to the Trademark Assignment Dataset is now available online. Find 1.29 million trademark assignments, involving 2.28 million unique trademark properties issued by the USPTO between March 1952 and January 2023: https://t.co/njrDAbSpwBpic.twitter.com/GkAXrHoQ9T
_(1920)_(14801820673).jpg)
