March 19, 2015: Virginia Tech to Continue Development of New Building Automation Solution
Project Is Aimed at Small and Medium-Sized Commercial Buildings
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has awarded the Virginia Polytechnic and State University Advanced Research Institute nearly $2 million to continue research and development of its Building Energy Management Open Source Software (BEMOSS) for small and medium-sized commercial buildings. DOE noted that, currently, small and medium-sized buildings make up over 95 percent of the floor space and about 50 percent of the energy consumed by commercial buildings in the U.S. each year.
Most commercial buildings in the U.S. are small (less than 5,000 square feet) or medium-sized (between 5,000-50,000 square feet), and fall outside the scope of most commercial buildings automation systems (BAS), said DOE.