New, Environmentally Friendly Building to be Unveiled

Members of the news media are invited to attend a dedication ceremony for a newly completed building that will serve as a testing ground for a variety of innovative clean-energy and design technologies developed at The Florida State University. The ceremony will take place:

FRIDAY, AUG. 14

9:30 A.M.

ENGINEERING LAB BUILDING

(located near the Love Building on Florida State’s main campus)

The new facility, dubbed the OGZEB (short for “Off-Grid Zero Emissions Building”), is a 1,000-square-foot structure that features building-design and energy innovations developed by local architects, engineers and environmental technology companies, as well as students and faculty from Florida State’s Energy & Sustainability Center. The latter includes students from the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Florida A&M University-Florida State University College of Engineering and from Florida State’s Department of Interior Design.

Among its highlights, the OGZEB is completely solar-powered, with excess electricity used to produce hydrogen for energy storage; it makes use of hydrogen-fueled appliances (hydrogen burns cleaner and more efficiently than natural gas); it features high-efficiency water and electrical systems; and it is designed to achieve LEED-NC Platinum certification for energy efficiency -- the first such building in Florida to earn that ranking.

“The OGZEB is a prototype for developing and implementing cutting-edge, alternative technologies in both residential and commercial settings,” said Anjane “Yulu” Krothapalli, the Don Fuqua Eminent Scholar Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Florida State and director of the Energy & Sustainability Center. “It also serves as an energy-efficient model in student living and office space for campus designers.”