Overview
Climate Engineering Extern at Transsolar KlimaEngineering
New York, NY & Stuttgart, Germany
January 2020
Building off my research at MIT with Digital Structures and my experience designing a sustainable apartment building, I externed with Transsolar, a climate engineering firm that advises architects on designing sustainable buildings that improve human comfort and energy efficiency. I worked on several projects and participated in the company-wide "Project Day" at their headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany.
Plug Load Tool
I designed a plug load tool in Excel that evaluated a building's total plug load given inputted plug loads or the average plug loads for inputted appliances. The tool then compared the plug loads to difference standards, such as Energy Star.
Tool interface in Excel
Houston Climate Change Analysis
I researched the impacts of climate change on a building site in Houston, TX using online tools, climate change models, and QGIS and presented my findings to the client.
I found that the two greatest climate change risks to the site were changes in temperature and humidity
Princeton Daylight Analysis
I performed daylight simulations in DIVA, a Rhino plug-in, for a large building in Princeton, NJ to inform the building's window layout. I performed the analysis in sections due to its high computational load.
DIVA daylight simulation results for one section of the building
Philadelphia Climate Analysis
I contributed to a climate report for a building in Philadelphia, PA by finding the average daily temperature in the city throughout the year using Ladybug.
Window Report
Transsolar is a member of the international development team for TRNSYS, the Transient System Simulation Tool. TRNSYS is a graphically based, modular software environment that models the behavior of transient systems to be simulated. I created a brief report explaining how to properly simulate windows in TRNSYS, one of the most common places to make a mistake when using the software. This built off my research on weatherproofing public housing buildings in New York City.
I created several diagrams explaining the values a user inputs into TRNSYS
Projecttag (Project Day)
I attended an intensive, three-day, all-company meeting at Transsolar’s headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany. I learned about several of the company's recent projects, presented some of my work, and discussed how the company could improve in the future.
Based on my discussions with some of the German teams, I developed a Grasshopper tool to show how Transsolar improvements reduce building energy loads
I presented some of my work to the entire company
I spent the weekend traveling around southwest Germany. A highlight was visiting the Porsche Museum...
...where I learned about Porsche's automotive history, including their development of lightweight accelerator pedals, which I brought back to my work with the MIT Solar Electric Vehicle Team.