I was chatting with an engineer the other day. She called to ask me some questions about old steam-heating systems, particularly those of the New York City variety. She was putting together a paper on what to watch out for if you were considering an energy management system (EMS) for an older building with either one- or two-pipe steam heat.

She mentioned that there were lots of case studies available on newer buildings, mostly provided by the folks selling the EMS packages, but there wasn’t any scientific research that she knew of on older, steam-heated buildings. You know, the sort where they had two identical buildings, each with the same problems, and they put an EMS in one but not in the other. I told her that I didn’t think two such buildings existed (exact same problems?) and knew of no unbiased research.