Thermal leaks and building energy efficiency

Many buildings in the U.S. lose significant amounts of energy due to the heat leaks caused by deficiencies in insulation as well as in construction and renovation practices. Heat leaks cause excessive energy consumption to maintain indoor comfort conditions. In the U.S., for example, approximately 43 percent of all energy is used for HVAC purposes. The generation of this excess energy, in turn, causes increased carbon dioxide emissions, which significantly contribute to climate change.

We focus our research on understanding the sources of the thermal leaks and improving the energy efficiency of buildings of the College of Earth and Mineral Science buildings. We’re planning to continuously monitor the exterior and interior temperatures of the buildings using thermal imaging from the fixed thermal camera and aerial thermal imaging from a UAV. The temperature differences in the collected thermal images will reveal the relative magnitude of the heat loss through walls, windows, and roofs, as well as the location of potential insulation defects and places of excessive heat leakage through cracks and gaps. We will also develop easy-to-use web applications where users can view the thermal image sets and combine thermal images with natural-color images for easier interpretation of the results. We will engage with a wide audience by presenting thermal videos and still images in collaboration with PSU Museum.

Results of the thermal imaging survey provide recommendations on priorities for repairing building insulation defects, improving existing insulation, and possible ideas for reconfiguring heating, air conditioning, and ventilation systems to be more energy-efficient and as a result, to reduce the college's carbon footprint.

For more information:

Visit the Inferno thermal camera webpage on the Geoinformatics and Earth Observation Laboratory (GEOlab) webpage.

The data sharing web-page provides an access to the end users to download the thermal and visible light images, continiously collected by the Flir A70 thermal camera, overlooking Deike building from the rooftop of the Walker building. This data is being collected as part of the EMS Sustainablility fund Thermal leaks project.