A physics professor at Syracuse University is working with the U.S. Department of Energy to create technologies that improve window energy efficiency.

Eric Schiff interviewed to be a program director at the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy about two years ago. Once accepted in the summer of 2014, he and other newly hired program directors spent two months deciding on possible energy programs.

Schiff took these two months to pursue a new program for the innovation of single-pane windows — a subject he said he has long been interested in.

It took more than six months to convince his colleagues at ARPA-E that the program, Single-Pane Highly Insulating Efficient Lucid Designs — or SHIELD — was a good idea, Schiff said, but his director eventually approved of it.

As program director for SHIELD, Schiff is living and working in Washington, D.C. while the Department of Energy pays his professor salary for three years.

The purpose of SHIELD is rooted in a problem with single-pane windows. These windows do not retain heat well in the winters or cool air well in the summers, which is costly and wastes about 2 percent of the energy people use, Schiff said.

The goal of Schiff’s program with the ARPA-E is to create innovative and marketable technologies that can solve this energy efficiency problem nationwide, he said.

“There are roughly 15 billion square feet of single-pane windows left in the United States,” Schiff said. “We estimate that if you fix all of those, even inexpensively, we would make probably $10 (billion) or $20 billion back, so it’s a good investment.”

One of the Department of Energy’s principles is to ensure that its technologies are realistically marketable for use outside of its programs, Schiff said.

“We may fund a dozen projects, but if two or three of those turn into actual products that you can buy five years from today, we would be delighted,” Schiff said.

To make these new technologies more attractive to the marketplace, Schiff said he believes the department needs to do more. He said improving single-pane windows is a good investment but doesn’t change one’s life very quickly, with heating bills decreasing 10 to 20 percent.

In addition to better efficiency, he said he believes that innovated windows should improve soundproofing.

When it comes to getting SHIELD in action, Schiff said the program is one at ARPA-E that chooses organizations and businesses that will enact the ideas of innovation.

“We have quite a few applications to be sifted through,” he said. “There will be a dozen winners and each of those will be given a project that will be run for two to three years.”

Schiff said a standard ARPA-E program costs about $30 million.

ARPA-E announced the program early this October. Before the announcement, however, there was a delay for about four months as the budget for the previous year had already been spent, Schiff said.

It took Schiff about nine months, starting in summer 2014, to fully develop and write the description for the program that was approved by the agency, he said.

Schiff was not alone in the development of SHIELD, however.

“I had a lot of help. ARPA-E has workshops where we consult with everybody else to make sure that we’re on target,” Schiff said. “It wasn’t just me but I did have the privilege of coming up with the idea, championing it and watching the whole program grow.”

Though SHIELD is not developed specifically for SU, Schiff said he believes the university to be a good potential customer of the program.

“At Syracuse University, if you wander around and carefully look at the windows, you’ll see that a lot of the buildings still just have a single pane of glass,” Schiff said. “Old-fashioned single-pane windows are tremendously leaky, as far as heat goes.”

Schiff added that SU pays a lot of money to heat these buildings, but it would also be expensive to replace the windows. In some cases, the building is a historical building, which would make the replacement of windows more difficult, if at all possible.

Samuel Clemence, interim dean of Hendricks Chapel and an engineer, spoke with Schiff about the benefits of SHIELD on SU’s campus.

Clemence and Schiff discussed putting a special coating on the windows of the chapel to make it cooler in the summer, which would increase energy efficiency.

“Hendricks Chapel is such an iconic and beautiful building on campus,” Clemence said. “We don’t want to do anything that would change the appearance in any way, so we’re just looking at possible ways to save energy and make it a more sustainable campus.”

The SHIELD program will begin next summer and finish in the summer of 2018 or 2019, Schiff said.

By the end of the project, Schiff said SU will be on the cutting edge of anything SHIELD comes up with.

Published on December 8, 2015 at 9:53 pm

Contact Anjani: asiman@syr.edu