SOURCES SOUGHT
A -- Retro-Commissioning Sensor Suitcase
- Notice Date
- 5/20/2016
- Notice Type
- Sources Sought
- NAICS
- 541712
— Research and Development in the Physical, Engineering, and Life Sciences (except Biotechnology)
- Contracting Office
- Department of Energy, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (DOE Contractor), Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, 1 Cyclotron Road, Berkeley, California, 94720, United States
- ZIP Code
- 94720
- Solicitation Number
- RFI-SAO-052016
- Archive Date
- 7/2/2016
- Point of Contact
- Sonya Owens, Phone: 5104865194
- E-Mail Address
-
sowens@lbl.gov
(sowens@lbl.gov)
- Small Business Set-Aside
- N/A
- Description
- Retro-Commissioning Sensor Suitcase: A Call for Vendor and Manufacturing Partners With support from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Building Technologies Office, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL), Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) have developed the Retro-Commissioning (RCx) Sensor Suitcase technology. The RCx Sensor Suitcase provides a hardware and software solution that non-experts can use to generate low or no-cost recommendations automatically on how to improve a building’s operating costs, comfort and energy performance. The DOE team is now looking to identify Vendor and Manufacturing Partners who can help manufacture the RCx Sensor Suitcase. The Retro-commissioning (RCx) Sensor Suitcase embeds the knowledge and skills of a highly experienced building commissioning practitioner into a scalable hardware and software package that can be easily deployed by a variety of building services personnel to make it easier and more cost-effective for small building owners and operators to reap the benefits and cost savings of building commissioning. It therefore offers the potential to provide energy services to a traditionally hard-to-reach market, that of small commercial buildings - a market of roughly 2.2 million small commercial buildings that are between 5,000 and 50,000 square feet [1] in floor area and typically served by packaged HVAC equipment. The DOE team has engaged an early-adopter user cohort of Deployment Partners from the energy services and small building owner community, and is now seeking a vendor/ manufacturing partner to help take the RCx Sensor Suitcase to market. As a Vendor/Manufacturing Partner, you will have the opportunity to join the DOE, Labs and the Deployment partner team, and: ● Design and develop a company-specific prototype product for testing and evaluation, with continued engagement with early-adopter Deployment Partners, to inform potential design revisions and provide feedback on features and usability. ● Refine your prototype to develop a commercial product, conduct product testing and evaluation as needed, and finalize business and marketing plans. ● Launch your commercial product for sale in the market. By becoming a Vendor/Manufacturing Partner, you will realize the following potential benefits: ● Increase your company’s product sales, service offerings, and presence in the building efficiency market; ● Position your company for future growth as increasing concerns about sustainability and environmental and climate issues increase national investment levels in building energy efficiency; ● Access National Laboratory expertise, technology, and intellectual property, including Capabilities in technology research and development, market assessments of the commercial buildings space, technology commercialization, and intellectual property protection; ● Access the team’s Deployment Partners for insights gained from real-building use of the technology, and as a first-wave technology purchasing group; ● Be first to market with an innovative technology with the potential to transform the market for retro-commissioning in small commercial buildings; ● Gain recognition as a leading edge partner and early adopter of innovative technology We seek a Vendor/Manufacturing Partner with the following characteristics: ● Strong enthusiasm for the technology; ● Ability to actively participate in the project and help ensure commercial success; ● Capability to manufacture and sell (or to procure third-party manufacturing services) commercial versions of the technology and to provide customer support; ● Demonstrated experience in designing and developing hardware products. If you are interested in this opportunity, please submit an MS Word document with the following information and return it to Ms. Sonya Owens, Senior Subcontract Administrator, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory by no later than June 17, 2016 at 5:00 pm EST. 1. How many years have you been in business? 2. How many employees do you have? 3. What states of the US do you do business in? 4. Please provide a brief description of your manufacturing capabilities, or procurement channels if manufacturing would be procured via third parties. 5. Describe any products that you have brought to market in the past, or currently offer; highlight any that are commercial buildings-related. 6. Why are you interested in partnering with the DOE National Laboratories in this effort? Based on the level of response that is received, the DOE National Laboratory team will host an informational webinar for respondents to learn more. If you have questions, please contact to sowens@lbl.gov Please note that this is not a solicitation for proposals, proposal abstracts or quotations. LBNL is not seeking proposals at this time, and will not accept unsolicited proposals. The purpose of this request is to obtain information regarding the availability and capability of all qualified sources. Any price/cost information requested by LBNL will be used for budget estimate purposes only. ● Cost of RFI Response Preparation : LBNL will not reimburse any vendor or respondent of any cost associated with preparing a response to this RFI. Responses the RFI will not be returned to respondent. ● Proprietary or Confidential Information : Any information received in response to this RFI that is confidential or proprietary information must be clearly designated as such and will be handled with due care and proper consideration of ethical and legal ramifications and governmental regulations. ● Amendments/Specifications : LBNL reserves the right to change the Request for Information timeline or other portions of this request at any time. ● Right to Cancel : LBNL reserves the right to cancel or reissue this Request for Information any time without obligation or liability. ● No Obligation to Buy or Issue Solicitation : LBNL will not execute a contract with any vendor as a result of this Request for Information. While LBNL may use responses to this request to draft a competitive solicitation for the subject of these services/products, issuing this request does not compel LBNL to do so. Timeline June 17, 2016: Responses to due to LBNL. July, 2016: Laboratory hosted informational webinar on RCx Sensor Suitcase Manufacturing partnership opportunity. Background Information and FAQs Introduction DOE’s Building Technologies Office is funding DOE national laboratory and industry partnerships to support a pilot Technology-to-Market (T2M) Initiative. DOE seeks to drive potentially high impact technologies from R&D to market adoption at scale, bridging the so-called “valley of death” between technological promise and actual market deployment by conducting complementary technical and commercialization activities, including: ● validating technology performance under realistic conditions, ● demonstrating the achievability of cost/performance targets, ● addressing manufacturing scale-up (to address wide-scale availability and costs needed to meet real-world payback requirements), and ● addressing business planning and sales strategy development (such as target market identification, sales channels, installation, and O&M). The Retro-commissioning (RCx) Sensor Suitcase is one of four projects in this T2M Initiative. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) concluded the first round of field tests and user engagement, and based on successful results are reaching out to potential Manufacturing Partner to help bring the technology to market. What is the Sensor Suitcase? The Retrocommissioning (RCx) Sensor Suitcase is a packaged hardware/software solution that automatically generates building-specific recommendations to realize up to 10% whole-building energy savings, with at least 50% reductions in labor relative to traditional approaches. The RCx Sensor Suitcase is a holistic solution, integrating sensing and analytics to identify control, efficiency, and conditioning problems across multiple systems for whole-building performance improvements. The technology consists of four primary components: 1. easy-install sensors (light, temperature, and HVAC status) with on-board data storage; 2. a suitcase to transport and charge sensors, and store and transfer data for PC analysis; 3. a tablet to configure sensors and provide installation guidance; and 4. a GUI software application to automatically analyze data and generate specific operational recommendations. Hardware and software components of the RCx Sensor Suitcase Technology What solution does the technology offer? The Sensor Suitcase is a hardware and software solution that non-experts can use to generate low- or no-cost recommendations automatically on how to improve a building's operating costs, comfort, and energy performance. The Sensor Suitcase embeds the knowledge and skills of a highly experienced building commissioning practitioner into a scalable hardware and software package that can be easily deployed by a variety of building services personnel to make it easier and more cost-effective for small building owners and operators to reap the benefits and cost savings for building commissioning. What market barrier does the technology address? Many commercial buildings do not perform as energy efficiently as they could, simply because energy-using equipment in the building has never been set up to maximize energy performance. Thermostat set points may be too low or too high, so rooftop units (RTUs) cool buildings down below recommended temperatures or keep them too warm (or both). Or, there may be no difference in the set point during hours when the building is unoccupied versus occupied; turning the heat and space conditioning down during unoccupied hours helps lower energy bills substantially. While traditional RCx is a possible solution, small commercial buildings – those between 5,000 and 50,000 square feet in size, which is 40% of the commercial buildings nationwide – do not typically have budgets or business models that allow for that kind of investment. Moreover, they also do not have “in-house” staff with expertise in building systems, and often cannot perform RCx or identify efficiency improvement opportunities. The result is that RCx is not performed, and opportunities to save energy and money are lost. What is the value proposition? To the vendor/manufacturing provider: The U.S. represents the most mature and largest ESCO market today with reported revenues of $6 billion in 2013, while the retro-commissioning market in the U.S. was $160 million in 2010. Service providers in these markets have largely been unable to serve the approximately 2 million ‘untapped’ small buildings the U.S. in which the technology could be used. These small buildings comprise nearly 28 billion square feet of floor area. A number of these providers have expressed a desire for streamlined tools that will enable them to lower transaction costs, and expand their services to the small buildings market. These providers, along with utility programs and owners of portfolios of small buildings, will present a large market and an established purchasing base for the Suitcase technology. To owners and service provider technology users: The Sensor Suitcase extensively streamlines the RCx process, thereby reducing labor costs of retro-commissioning through decreases in labor time and expertise required. It enables penetration of RCx into the small buildings sector, where low energy expenditures place tight constraints on payback and human capital. The Sensor Suitcase also offers a significant reduction in labor time/costs for RCx. It offers guided, substantially automated sensor configuration and installation, in contrast to logger solutions, which require expertise to select and deploy properly. The software and sensors eliminate the need for walkthrough, spot measurements, and engineering expertise to interpret data. The Sensor Suitcase enables less experienced staff to instrument and analyze sensed data on lighting and HVAC control and operations. The efficiency goal of the Sensor Suitcase is to realize average whole-building savings of up to 10% once simple measures are taken, such as using thermostat setback at night, eliminating short cycling of the rooftop units, using outdoor air economizing, and eliminating excessive daytime lighting use. (For reference, traditional RCx saves 16% on average, based on analysis of actual RCx projects by LBNL in 2009). What will be covered in the July Informational Webinar? The informational webinar will provide an opportunity for interested parties to learn more about the technology and the partnership opportunity to bring the technology to market. The National Labs team will present a technical overview and market assessment, and discuss the business value proposition from the perspective of both technology users as well as prospective suppliers. A question and answer session will be included. [1] DOE Energy Information Administration, Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey 2012. Total does not include warehouses or vacant buildings. [2] Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). Current Size and Remaining Market Potential of the U.S. Energy Service Company Industry. 2013 [3] Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance (NEEA). Evaluation of ACE Model Key Assumptions for Commissioning and Retro-commissioning. 2014 [4] DOE Energy Information Administration, Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey 2012. Total does not include warehouses or vacant buildings.
- Web Link
-
FBO.gov Permalink
(https://www.fbo.gov/spg/DOE/LBNL/LB/RFI-SAO-052016/listing.html)
- Place of Performance
- Address: TBD, Berkeley, California, 94720, United States
- Zip Code: 94720
- Zip Code: 94720
- Record
- SN04124279-W 20160522/160520234426-8752a974d895c9e6c5dfb8afb98cb83d (fbodaily.com)
- Source
-
FedBizOpps Link to This Notice
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