Energizing our Communities

Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) is one of the largest combined natural gas and electric energy companies in the United States. They employ over 23,000 employees who work to deliver the transmission and delivery of energy to approximately 16 million people throughout a 70,000-square-mile service area in northern and central California.

Capio Group provided solutions for PG&E’s Energy Efficiency Programs that are designed to offer technical and financial assistance to commercial, industrial, agricultural and residential customers who install energy efficient and electric load reduction equipment at their facilities or in their homes. These programs produce long-term energy and demand savings while reducing barriers to customers and providing incentives to implement energy efficient measures. These programs also help to improve building and product design practices and technologies.

Capio Group designed, developed, and implemented 3D radiance models to facilitate daylighting simulations. Models were developed for both medium and large warehouses. Capio Group extended the existing simulation tool to handle new simulation cases (Java, JUnit, bash). The team ran simulations for the warehouses and for open, private, and small offices. The simulations include other variables including: climate zones, façade variations, skylights, overhangs, and other orientations and improvements. In total, 8760 illuminus profiles were run for each simulation.

After all simulations were run, Capio Group post-processed the Visible Light Transmission (VLT) results for a defined subset of simulation results. The team also post-processed illuminance results for all simulations in order to generate a set of average illuminance by hour for a typical day for each month of the year. The results were used when evaluating lighting options for existing offices and new warehouses.