Society Awards and Honors
2011 Awards
Guopeng Liu and Project Win AEE Awards
Guopeng Liu, Energy and Environment Directorate, recently was named the Association of Energy Engineers (AEE) Young Energy Professional of the Year in Region I, which covers the northeastern United States. AEE is a professional association of over 13,000 members engaged in the energy industry.
The award recognizes Guopeng's outstanding contributions to the energy profession that he made prior to his current position at PNNL. He joined the Laboratory just last May.
In addition to receiving the Young Energy Professional award, Guopeng was pleased that an energy efficiency project he previously managed won AEE's Region IV Energy Project of the Year. Efficiencies at Kiewit Plaza-a 16-story Omaha, NE, office building with tenants that include Warren Buffett-produced a 62 percent reduction in electricity use in its heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) system, and a 37 percent reduction of whole building electricity usage. Additionally, there was a 48 percent drop in natural gas consumption. In all, it translated to savings of nearly $140,000 over a nine-month period with simple payback in eight months.
"Innovative building control technology and commercial building re-tuning can help to achieve the goal of President Obama's Better Buildings Initiative by improving building operation and maintenance. Even for a well-maintained facility with effective systems, such as Kiewit Plaza, we can still apply efficiencies that achieve significant energy savings and maintain comfort without large capital outlays," Guopeng explains. "Two DOE-sponsored projects I'm involved in are consistent with those efforts: one is training the next generation of commercial building technology workers, and the other is developing the retrofit guides for commercial building owners and facility managers."
The AEE awards were presented in December at the 33rd World Energy Engineering Conference in Washington, D.C (announced 3/1/2011)