About Us
The purpose of IDEAL is to serve the as a regionally focused organization assisting in the performance assurance of zero energy buildings - from design to operation - for the Rocky Mountain Region, making Boulder the foremost location for US experience in ZEB.
Who We Are
The Integrated Design and Energy Assurance Lab (IDEAL) is a self-supporting service of the Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute (RASEI) to the building design and construction industry. The IDEAL includes interdisciplinary University of Colorado Boulder (UCB) faculty, National Renewable Energy Laboratory NREL research staff, and graduate students that support the development of high-performance commercial and institutional building design and operations including lighting, daylighting and energy infrastructure. A distinguishing feature of the lab is the focus on operational challenges and improvement opportunities to provide long-term performance assurance of zero energy buildings (ZEB) designs. The IDEAL will establish design and construction market relationships in the Great Plains and Mountain Region through the provision of technical assistance, design guidance, and building energy efficiency research.
What We Do
The IDEAL is about increasing building value at no additional project cost to the owner, and meeting the goals outlined in our mission with cutting edge technology and practices. Functionally, the IDEAL’s goals are to assist in decisions that support 50% reductions in a building's loads and 50% increases in its system efficiencies, utilizing state-of-the art simulation and verification techniques. These ambitious goals are continuously monitored through model based commissioning and energy analytics, centrally housed in the IDEAL, powering energy dashboards and decision making at the building site.
Our Goals
The IDEAL operates with the intent of serving four main goals:
- Investigation of novel building technologies, their processes, and operation
- Workforce development in both architecture and engineering of zero energy buildings to feed the pipeline of skilled labor
- Deployment, testing, and improvement of simulation and analysis tools for design and operations
- Offering first-hand experience of zero energy buildings in the Colorado front range and centrally coalescing real- time information on their performance using visualization and energy analytics