FAYETTEVILLE — The home of a Fayetteville resident was the first stop this winter for a Syracuse University research and demonstration project studying applied energy losses in heat pumps.
The university is the prime leading the project by way of its collaborative organization located downtown known as the Syracuse Center of Excellence in Environmental and Energy Systems (SyracuseCoE), which aims to accelerate the development of innovative, sustainable solutions while engaging companies and institutions to create new products and services in the realms of indoor environmental quality, clean and renewable energy, and water resource management.
The university was awarded the project through the United States Department of Energy Building America Program, and the team at the helm received a signed contract from the federally funded National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) two days prior to the inaugural field visit made to Peter Wirth’s house on Cammot Lane in Fayetteville.
Following a request for proposals from that Colorado-based renewable energy laboratory representing the U.S. Department of Energy, nine teams of experts from around the country, including Syracuse’s, were selected to develop, scale and implement solutions that advance energy efficiency in residential buildings. Each of the nine awardees is now given a period of one to five years to appropriately implement their proposed retrofit solution, and the team from Syracuse will receive $1 million in funding to do so over that five-year span.
Building America works closely with industry, academia and community-based organizations to advance commercial building and residential housing performance solutions.
The local project is looking particularly into how to improve the efficiency of air-source heat pumps and further reduce carbon emissions as a result. It’s being led by Principal Investigator Ian Shapiro, who is a professor of practice in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at SU and the associate director of building science and community programs for the team lead SyracuseCoE.
“Our focus will be on reducing what we call applied energy losses in heat pumps,” says Shapiro. “We believe that we can substantially reduce energy use just by helping people make better choices in installation and operation. If this hypothesis is correct, it will help people in affordable housing reduce energy costs, reduce carbon emissions, and reduce the impact of electrification on the electric grid.”
During the hours-long site assessment conducted in Fayetteville, SyracuseCoE faculty and students looked at the different features of Wirth’s outdoor and indoor heating units.
While surveying the three-and-half-ton Bosch unit outside, the team members looked at the height of the heat pump’s snow stand, whether there was an ice-melting base pan heater at the bottom of the unit, and whether the heat exchanger was dirty. Shapiro said that after a few or more years he would encourage people to spray the exchanger to clean it, but having been installed around 2021, Wirth’s system was not yet at that point at the time of the visit.
When assessing the basement unit, the guests looked at how well the piping penetrating through the wall was sealed, and they also saw that Wirth uses a ducted system with a furnace fan to circulate air through the heat pump.
Wirth’s system employs a hybrid approach in that he runs a gas-fired furnace as the backup at colder temperatures, specifically when it gets to be less than 20 degrees Fahrenheit outside.
“In the 1980s we had some bad experiences with heat pumps that people still remember because back then heat pumps were operating at a constant speed, and as a result, there’s worry about heat pumps in cold climates,” Shapiro said. “It would be like if a car only drove 30 miles per hour, but today all of these heat pumps are variable speed, which means when it’s cold outside they speed up to provide more heat to the house because the house needs more heat, and when it’s mild out, they run slowly and they even sometimes will shut off. It was those constant-speed heat pumps that struggled when it was very cold outside.”
Shapiro was joined at Wirth’s house by graduate students in mechanical engineering from Syracuse University Ji Zhou, Sameeraa Soltanian-Zadeh, and Wenfeng Huang, as well as Shree Krishnan, an engineering management student who is in Shapiro’s building measurements class.
“If our project is successful, it would enable reducing Pete’s bill by 20% or 30% or we’re thinking maybe even 40% on the electric side,” Shapiro said.
Other SU faculty affiliated with the project will include professors Jianshun “Jensen” Zhang and Bing Dong. Zhang is the executive director of SyracuseCoE, and Dong is that organization’s associate director of grid-interactive buildings. According to a press release from the university, the team involved will “leverage local partnerships and access to SyracuseCoE’s unique testbed facilities to refine heat pump technology and operation and expand their application in underserved communities.”
“The DOE Building America Program has had profound impacts on the advancement of housing technologies and practices for new construction,” Zhang said.
“SyracuseCoE is proud to host and support the project with state-of-the art facilities and contribute to the improvement of energy efficiency and indoor environmental quality through effective retrofitting solutions for existing buildings.”
Project stakeholders also include the Syracuse University College of Engineering and Computer Science, the not-for-profit Association for Energy Affordability based in New York City, and Ithaca-based company specializing in green design Taitem Engineering, which Shapiro started, its name standing for “Technology As If The Earth Matters.”
Wirth, 74, said he has long been an environmental advocate, and currently he is the vice president for the local group Climate Change Awareness & Action as well as a member of both Renewable Fayetteville and Sustainable Manlius.
Wirth said the “huge energy transformation” his parents lived through was the switch from coal to natural gas. Now, he says the next evolution catching on is the transition to electric heat pump technology.
He said he’s “excited” to be part of a project that will help with the development and improvement of heat pumps, especially with his house being the first the team came to as they put together their survey.
“Not only will this study impact I think the design of heat pumps on the industry side, but it will also impact best practices for homeowners, because with any technology, people are like, ‘What do I do?’” Wirth said.
Wirth has lived in his split-level, 2,050-square-foot Fayetteville home for about 20 years, and it was constructed in the early 1960s.
