The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) is planning to test and evaluate 16 sustainable building technologies and practices in federal facilities under the Green Proving Ground program. The goal of the program is to determine the most effective technologies that can then be replicated throughout the GSA’s facility inventory.
The selected technologies were chosen from a pool of 140 projects in the GSA portfolio that currently are implementing innovative or underutilized sustainable techniques. The list comprises seven HVAC-related technologies, two related to building envelopes, two related to lighting, and one technology each related to metering, policy, power generation, water heating, and water. Specifically, the technologies included in the program focus on the use of chilled beams, commercial ground-source heat pumps, condensing boilers, high r-value windows, integrated daylighting systems, light ambient and task lighting, a magnetic bearing compressor, net metering, non-chemical water treatment, photovoltaics (PV), PV with solar heating, plug load reduction, smart windows, a variable refrigerant flow system, variable-speed chiller plant control, and a wireless mesh sensor network.
The technologies will be evaluated over FY 2011. More detailed breakdowns of each technology and practice, as well as information as to why the GSA is interested in each technology, is online at gsa.gov/gpg.