The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced the Buildings Energy Efficiency Frontiers & Innovation Technologies 2019 Funding Opportunity (FOA) for up to $47 million for innovative technologies to make energy more affordable.

The FOA is intended to increase energy productivity — both within and beyond a building’s walls — by supporting the R&D and performance verification of flexible and energy-efficient technologies for residential and commercial buildings across three topic areas. (Learn more about the DOE funding opportunity.)

Flexible Buildings Technologies: This supports early-stage R&D that integrates advanced sensing, controls and communication with flexible, energy-efficient technologies to advance the role buildings can play in the modernizing power grid. Subtopics include cybersecurity through adaptive building controls, performance verification for flexible building loads, advanced actuators and thermal energy storage.

Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning Technologies: This supports the development of highly efficient technologies for thermal end-uses in buildings, including space conditioning, water-heating and refrigeration. Subtopics include non-vapor compression heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) technologies and fuel-driven building equipment.

Solid-state Lighting Technologies: This topic supports the development of highly efficient lighting technologies and systems to improve lighting energy efficiency. The subtopics address the green gap and droop in LEDs, quantum dot optical down-converters, stable and efficient white OLEDs, light extraction and utilization for OLEDs, and advanced lighting systems.

The DOE said that residential and commercial buildings account for approximately 40% of the U.S. total energy demand and about 75% of all electricity use. In addition, growing peak electricity demands are challenging the electrical grid, exacerbated by stresses from transmission and distribution infrastructure constraints and the increasing number of variable renewable electricity power generation sources.

It said that integrating more flexible and even dispatchable loads through building automation can optimize energy use and lead to decreased energy costs.

According to the DOE, buildings have historically been passive consumers of energy. Next-generation flexible technologies give buildings and equipment the potential to provide grid services that utilities currently receive from other, more traditional grid assets.