The new $135-million Energy Systems Integration Facility includes 15 labs that will do cutting-edge energy research and explore how to add renewable resources to the power grid. ESIF, part of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory campus in Golden, Colo., will perform tasks ranging from fuel-cell development to smart-power testing. But the entire facility is also a sustainability laboratory.
Even its construction is an experiment in how far contractors could take green building practices. Instead of building concrete retaining walls outside, for example, general contractor JE Dunn Construction, Denver, recycled boulders from the ESIF site into gabion walls for erosion prevention. The project team also used NREL technology on the project—from dynamic windows that automatically darken to cut glare and lower temperatures to next-generation simulation modeling—and asked NREL experts to advise contractors on how to employ that technology.