PD3 TECHNOLOGIES, INC. — Department of Energy SBIR Phase I: 12e

Description

The ideal state of any indoor lived-in environment is a balance of comfortable air temperature, air humidity and air quality, achieved with as little recurring energy as possible and irrespective of building design, age, geography, or ambient weather conditions. However, management of residential indoor air quality is typically left to a centralized HVAC system with a single thermostat feedback leading to massive zonal differences and uncertainty due to duct performance and lack of even ventilation. Better ventilation solutions are needed for better air quality in new and existing residential buildings. Despite recent cost reductions in sensors for measuring real-time air properties (temperature, humidity, CO₂ concentration, particulates, VOCs, etc.), these sensors have not been deployed in the right product approach to help efficiently manage zonal indoor environments at scale. The right product must be modular to meet a wide range of applications for existing and new buildings alike. The right product will be low cost, easy to install, high efficiency, data-driven and integrated with controls of existing HVAC assets. PD3 will accelerate and complete the development of its intelligent ventilator platform (IV50). Inspired by ductless Heat Recovery Ventilators (HRVs) currently on the market, the IV50 is a low cost, self- powered, modular ventilator which monitors indoor and outdoor air conditions and is controlled through cloud-based artificial intelligence driven analysis to balance residential building air quality and energy needs in cooperation with existing building HVAC and ventilation systems. The IV50 will enable ventilation controls with clear consideration of real-time indoor and outdoor air quality, forecasted conditions and quality, time-shift opportunities, and behavior of existing HVAC assets, such as central HVAC, kitchen ventilators and whole house fans / economizers. During Phase I, PD3 will complete design and prototype a fully functional IV50 unit including full indoor and outdoor air quality sensor suites, and control logic. The IV50 prototype will be evaluated in a ventilation laboratory owned and operated by the project’s primarily technical and commercialization partner. Data from the lab evaluation will be used to determine the full scope of IV50’s application potential in new and existing residential buildings through careful modeling of performance for use in building modeling software. The development team has proven experience in capability in all needed skills including product design for manufacturing, embedded software design, and HVAC product commercialization and distribution. Post Phase I, the IV50 will be tested in real-world residential spaces for which PD3 already has eager early adopters. Initially, IV50 will be commercialized as a bolt-on to existing whole house fan systems and new whole house fan sales before also launching with compatible smart thermostats and other HVAC systems through channel partnerships. Because of IV50’s complementary feature set to existing HVAC products, IV50’s path-to-market can use existing product channels for rapid adoption.