FLEXLAB^® is the world’s most advanced building efficiency testbed. It is a completely reconfigurable, customizable platform to study commercial whole building and grid integration applications. System technologies, controls, and R&D tools are advanced by FLEXLAB’s specialized infrastructure.

FLEXLAB is comprised of a stand-alone building consisting of four testbeds, as well as an Occupied Lighting and Plug Load Testbed and a Virtual Design & Visualization Testbed inside the building next to it (Building 90). Three of the exterior testbeds are single-story, and one is two stories high. All testbeds focus on commercial building applications, with applicability in educational, retail, and multi-family residences as well.

The single-story testbed at the far end rotates 270 degrees to enable accelerated testing at different solar orientations. In the two-story test bed, a mid-level floor can be added to simulate two building floors, or can be left out to allow for tall facade and high bay rooms to be studied, such as atria and big box retail environments.

Pioneering R&D in building design, energy efficiency, and comfort

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FLEXLAB is the only facility in the world that enables users to configure and test high performance, whole-building, integrated systems, including renewable energy and storage, under real-world conditions. Each testbed allows for the study of HVAC, lighting, facade, and interior and exterior shading as well as plug load studies along with their integrated controls.

A publication in Joule documents a potential 80% greenhouse gas (GHG) reduction possible from the existing US building stock. Whole building integrated energy solutions play a major role in realizing these savings cost-effectively.

— Jared Langevin, Chioke B. Harris, Janet L. Reyna. Assessing the Potential to Reduce U.S. Building CO2 Emissions 80% by 2050. Joule, Volume 3, Issue 10, P2403-2424, OCTOBER 16, 2019

How FLEXLAB^® can make your building work better for you

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True to its name, all of FLEXLAB^®’s buildings systems (HVAC, lighting, glazing, skylights, shading, facades, plug loads, etc.) can be adjusted to represent nearly any existing building, energy code condition or new construction design.

Building Exterior - Outside, any of the grey-colored building elements can be removed or replaced, such as window and wall assemblies. Exterior shading can be added, and roofs can accommodate equipment such as photovoltaic panels, skylights, and HVAC rooftop units.

Building Interior - Inside, floor and ceiling heights can be raised or lowered and interior partitions added to create multiple building zones. Lighting is designed for quick change-out by cord and plug, and sprinklers are on flexible hoses to allow for easy adjustment to different ceiling heights. Radiant heating and cooling is installed in the slab of every building, and each testbed has a different concrete floor design to replicate a variety of structural conditions.

FLEXLAB Replicates Your Building’s Conditions - FLEXLAB uses a kit of building parts to enable a wide variety of construction mock-ups, spanning generations, for building studies. Envelope, facade, HVAC, and lighting systems can effectively replicate existing building conditions, demonstrate code minimum conditions, and mock-up advanced systems and designs, such as high performance net-zero energy conditions.

Make our building yours

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FLEXLAB provides true comparative test conditions. To produce effective studies of building systems with numerous operating variables, one must be able to make comparisons under otherwise identical conditions. Each exterior FLEXLAB testbed contains two identical test cells: baseline (reference) and experimental. The comparison cells enable direct study against business-as-usual cases, such as existing building conditions and those meeting minimum energy code requirements, providing the experimenter with real-world results to understand and improve system performance.

Each testbed cell is 30' deep by 20' wide—about the size of a building’s standard HVAC zone and the theoretical depth of the usefulness of daylight into a space. Users can compare the performance of new technologies together against baseline existing building performance, or old to new technologies and designs, to quantify differences and validate performance.

FLEXLAB^® is double-visionary

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Weather station equipment on the roof of testbeds 1 and 2 measure ambient temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, horizontal illuminance, irradiance and other environmental conditions.

A sky camera also captures a high dynamic range image of the sky every five minutes. The images can be used to capture data such as sky brightness and overcast conditions. Data can be found at flexskycam.lbl.gov. All high-accuracy readings enable advanced controls and analysis of building systems.

Weather station & sky camera

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This rotational testbed can change its orientation, opening new possibilities for conducting building technology and controls tests under different solar exposures. Built on a turntable and powered by a single three-horsepower motor, it can rotate 270 degrees at a speed of 18 degrees per minute. This testbed can also rotate to track the sun over the course of a day, and simulate solar conditions at different times of the year or other latitudes by rotating towards or away from the sun. Unlike any other facility, FLEXLAB^® can use this capability to accelerate technology testing to study different seasonal solar conditions (e.g. high and low sun angles) within a short timeframe.

Watch out — this testbed rotates

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Evaluating whole-building system performance under different climate conditions is a unique FLEXLAB capability. Two testbeds simulate the thermal loads of all the U.S. climate zones, except for Alaskan winters, by raising or lowering the interior temperature to create an inside- to outside- temperature difference that would be the same as the building in another climate.

This technique can be used to test performance in other climate zones, but can also be used to accelerate testing in a single climate zone – creating winter or summer loads when desired instead of waiting for these seasons to occur.

Spin Control

Testbed XR’s ability to rotate also helps users simulate solar position at different times of year by rotating away from or towards the sun to achieve desired sun angles. Testbed XR can also simulate solar conditions at different latitudes using a similar technique. FLEXLAB provides unique opportunities to test technologies efficiently and through multiple conditions with ease.

Image: ASHRAE, 2020

FLEXLAB^® changes the climate — on purpose

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FLEXLAB^®’s research focuses on comprehensive whole-building energy-efficient solutions, but the ultimate goal of building design is to create a space where occupants are comfortable and productive. At FLEXLAB, users can study thermal and visual comfort, and indoor environmental performance, whether as a prototype system or as a mock-up of whole-building design. By evaluating the ways occupants use planned building systems, designers can ensure occupant satisfaction and adjust the design accordingly if problems emerge.

Setting a high bar for efficiency and comfort (and a low bar for costs)

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Measurement is the cornerstone of all FLEXLAB^® research, so high-accuracy sensors monitor all building systems and components in unprecedented detail. FLEXLAB has thousands of sensors and monitored data points in the floor slab, walls, windows, roof, lighting, and HVAC systems. Unlike any other facility, these sensors go beyond humidity and temperature monitoring to capture heat flux, hydronic, and air-side flows to determine heating and cooling loads. They provide thermal and visual performance measurements in the space, as well as lighting, HVAC, and other system measurements.

Every device and each electrical outlet is also on its own electrical circuit, which is monitored for current and voltage at utility-grade levels of accuracy, enabling demand response and grid integration studies. FLEXLAB produces an unprecedented granularity and precision of data to provide an understanding about a technology's energy and environmental performance.

Big Data: Knowledge is power-saving

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Each testbed cell's telecom closet houses electrical panels, power metering, data acquisition for experimental sensors, weather station monitoring, and controls for HVAC equipment. Data access can be managed securely on a channel-by-channel basis.

Berkeley Lab specially designed and built the modular, flexible, scientific grade data acquisition and controls system to support research needs, such as providing a highly transparent and customizable method to program controls sequences.

FLEXLAB^® can accommodate any type of input or output device, and any kind of control system interface. Each experiment is provided with its own secure central database, monitoring and visualization, controls scripting tools, onsite or remote access, and a controls interface.

What’s in the closet?

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FLEXGRID, the newest capability at FLEXLAB^®, enables grid integration research to manage demand, renewable energy and storage; and it shows how to use energy when it is cleanest, providing grid benefits and savings for customers. FLEXGRID studies control strategies that take into account weather, grid conditions and the price of energy, as well as possible storage alternatives, such as a connected electric vehicle’s battery storage.

FLEXGRID's installed hardware includes photovoltaic arrays, a battery bank, inverters, Opal-RT grid simulator, Ametek regenerative power supply, programmable load banks, and bidirectional electric vehicle charging.



FLEXGRID: Testbed for building-to-grid integration

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