Tunneling Through the Cost Barrier

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Chapter 6

• Tunneling Through the Cost Barrier

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Whole System Engineering can tunnel through the
cost barrier

• Get a more for less result
• Saving more energy can make cost come down and
  return on investment go up
• Big savings often cost even less up front than
  small or zero savings
• Integrate design so each measure achieves
  multiple benefits
• Piggyback on improvements already being made for
  other reasons

3
Design

• Really just applied foresight
• What you do now to achieve what you want later
• All the really important mistakes are made on
  the first day
• Designers mindware improves with age and
  experience

4
Traditional Design Teaching

• Design is the art of compromise
• Design is choosing the least unsatisfactory
  trade-offs between many desirable but
  incompatible goals

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Natures Design Approach

• Nature does not compromise, it optimizes
• Everything in nature is continually improved and
  retested
• A change in any aspect of an ecosystem can have
  widespread ramifications because all elements are
  coevolving to work optimally together
• When system is optimized, trade-offs
  compromises are unnecessary

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3 Simple, Cost-Saving Precepts of Whole-System
Engineering

• The whole system should be optimized
• All measurable benefits should be counted
  (especially energy capital costs)
• The right steps should be taken at the right time
  in the right sequence

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Interfaces Experience with Pipes Pumps

• Use big pipes small pumps reverse of original
  design
• Big pipes less friction
• Less friction smaller pumps, less power
• Make pipes short straight rather than long
  crooked
• Design had fatter pipes a cleaner layout

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The problem of pipes pumps

• Motors use 3/5 of the worlds electricity
• 20 of that 3/5 is used for pumping
• Majority of factories full of huge pumps, often
  running around the clock
• Friction is the enemy
• Friction can be reduced, nearly eliminated, at a
  profit by looking beyond a single pump to the
  whole pumping system.

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Interfaces Results

• 92 lower pumping energy
• Lower capital cost
• Simpler faster construction
• Less use of floor space
• More reliable operation
• Easier maintenance
• Better performance
• (entire system optimized for multiple benefits)

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Key to whole-system engineering

• Meticulous attention to detail
• Close attention often reveals multiple benefits
• Think backward from downstream to upstream to
  compound savings
• Do things in the right order

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Some Multiple Benefits of Superwindows

• radiant comfort
• no under-window radiators
• smaller ducts
• better blocking of ultraviolet rays
• better blocking of noise
• no condensation
• better daylighting
• simpler controls

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Do the right things in the right order

• Retrofitting lights and AC
• Do lights first so the AC unit can be designed
  smaller
• Otherwise you pay for more cooling capacity than
  youd need
• Retrofitting air handling system
• Interacts with other building systems
  superwindows, lighting, daylighting, cooling,
  etc.
• Smaller fans heat the air less, requiring less
  cooling and hence smaller fans

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Great (whole system) Engineering

• Elegantly simple and frugal
• Use less material so less can go wrong, less work
  involved, less cost better performance
• Solving for Pattern-finding solutions that are
  good in all respects- focus not just on the part
  needing a fix, but entire system
• When your solution for one problem accidentally
  solves several others

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World Master of the new design mentality
Singaporean engineer Eng Lock Lee

• Designs 3-10x more efficient, delivers better
  services, cost less to build
• He wrings out friction waste of every kind
• Use just the right amount of every resource, in
  the right time, place manner
• Every input is measured
• Energy is used frugally, then reused repeatedly