Blog - Smart Buildings Center

GridFWD 2024 10/1 – 10/2 in Banff Canada!

September 9, 2024 By SBC staff

There’s never been a more critical time to examine market dynamics and their impacts on our energy systems. On October 1 and 2, GridFWD 2024 will bring together all the stakeholders for in-depth updates, discussions and networking in beautiful Banff. Connect and share with regional operators, utilities, tech innovators and more market makers. Get the details in our preliminary program and make your plans today for GridFWD 2024.

See this partial list of participating organizations: AESO, Berkshire Hathaway, CAISO, Electricity Canada, EnergyHub, ENMAX, EPCOR, EPRI, ERCOT, IESO, Microsoft, PacifiCorp, Siemens, SPP, PJM, Utilidata and WPP.

First School District in WA to Comply with CBPS

September 6, 2024 By SBC staff

OLYMPIA SCHOOL DISTRICT has become the first school in Washington to achieve compliance with the Clean Building Performance Standards! The achievement was supported by Climate Corps Fellow Grace Yockey, who drafted critical documents for submission.

Yockey worked on the Energy Maintenance Plan, detailing the district’s energy efficiency improvements, as well as the Operations and Maintenance Plan, showing how buildings will be operated and maintained. “Olympia School District’s Capital High School was the first building to submit and get approved,” Grace said, “our submission can serve as a model and resource.”

Yockey’s supervisor and team lead, Frank Wilson, is the Executive Director of Operations at Olympia School District. “Grace has an excellent grasp of our district goals,” Wilson shared, “They align well with her own personal beliefs, which helps keep the [sustainability] conversation at the forefront.”

The accomplishment was published in the Spring 2024 WAMOA journal.

Follow SEI on LinkedIn for more info and posts like this!

Pump Industry Workforce and Education Workshop 10/3: Seattle, WA

September 5, 2024 By SBC staff

With over 16 million skilled technical jobs available for individuals with associate degrees or similar qualifications, and even more for engineering graduates with practical experience, the demand for skilled professionals is higher than ever.

The Hydraulic Institute University, in collaboration with BetterBricks, invites you to an interactive workshop designed to elevate awareness, develop effective strategies, and foster valuable partnerships. This workshop offers a unique platform to share resources, exchange best practices, and explore industry programs with a focus on energy efficiency, building technologies, pumping, irrigation and other key themes.

Sessions will highlight different needs and different approaches for both educators and employers. Aligning courses and certification to curricula and career paths to ensure that tomorrow’s engineers and skilled technical workers will be practice-ready.

Learn more or register here: Pump Industry Workforce and Education Workshop – Pumps.org

Register Today: Explore the Latest Innovations at the 2024 CalFlexHub Symposium

September 5, 2024 By SBC staff

In-person Registration open until 9/15!

Registration link (requires signing into Zoom).

The CalFlexHub 2024 Annual Symposium will be held on September 24, 8am-6pm PT in Berkeley, CA. This year’s event explores the latest innovations in policy, research, and products in load flexibility and showcases CalFlexHub’s portfolio of projects featuring keynote speakers from the California Energy Commission, the U.S. Department of Energy, California Public Utilities Commision, utilities, community choice aggregators, industry leaders, plus an opportunity to meet leading innovators on building and EV charging price-response automation technologies.

CalFlexHub is embracing a hybrid event with the option to attend remotely. If you are interested in joining us in person, please register by September 15.

When registering for in-person attendance:

Please take note of and answer the related background questions (such as birth country and citizenship). This important information is used to confirm your access to Berkeley Lab campuses with an official visitor’s pass. Please wait for confirmation of your in-person registration and additional details
Visit this site to learn more about “Getting to Berkeley Lab”
If any other transportation questions, please see Berkeley Lab’s FAQs

More info and the full agenda can be found at: https://calflexhub.lbl.gov/

Building Potential and Smart Buildings Center Education Program Named as Partners on Federal Grants

September 4, 2024 By SBC staff

Building Potential and Smart Buildings Center Education program are excited to announce the organizations were named as sub awardees on two federal grants with our partners the City of Seattle Office of Sustainability & Environment (OSE) and WA Department of Commerce!

City of Seattle’s OSE – Building Potential named as partner to provide technical help desk support and development of BOC curriculum to support Building Emissions Performance Standard

WA State Dept of Commerce – SBCEP named as partner to scale Climate Corps Fellow program and additional support for Clean Buildings Performance Standard compliance

We are proud to announce these partnerships and look forward to continuing to work with OSE and Commerce by creating and expanding access to technical resources and educational programs that help reduce greenhouse gas emissions and expand the skills of our green workforce.

Community Energy Labs Job: Lead Backend Engineer

September 4, 2024 By SBC staff

Our friends at CEL want to tell you about an exciting job opportunity!

Climate change is one of the most important issues of our time. Community Energy Labs is working to meet that challenge by helping to reduce the carbon footprint of buildings with our innovative, machine learning-powered SaaS platform.

We’re looking for a Lead Backend Engineer with experience building resilient event-driven microservices, and a deep hands-on devops skillset, to help us architect, scale, and operate our platform.

In this role, you’ll be the first full-time engineer on our team and will partner with our Head of Engineering to design and implement solutions to our most important technical challenges as we move from successful prototype into production. This role will be rigorous and require a wide-ranging skill set (but we hope fun and rewarding) and our interview process reflects that.

Learn more about this role or apply here!

In-person Registration open until 9/15!

Contact Us