Window Rating System to Increase Energy Efficiency
May 29, 2015
New ratings will verify efficient design, performance.
While window attachments like shutters, solar shades, and awnings can provide a host of economic and aesthetic benefits to facilities, a new rating system will help quantify those benefits to enable easier comparisons between products.
The program will be developed by the Attachments Energy Rating Council (AERC), which was created by the Window Covering Manufacturers Association, and will help realize the approximately 800 trillion BTU of energy that could be saved by 2030 with increased use of window attachments.
Within the next four years, the AERC will create energy performance-based ratings and certification standards as well as a publicly searchable database of window attachment performance data. The program will provide performance data on material properties such as transmittance, reflectance, and emissivity, in addition to energy efficiency. The new rating system will also involve simulations of product performance to standardize procedures for testing an array of products.
