Next week, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory will celebrate the opening of four newly constructed outdoor testbeds, which have been added to its Flexlab facility.
Webcor Builders and its subcontractors will be the first to conduct experiments in Flexlab’s new rotating testbed, which rotates up to 270° for different orientations with respect to the sun, to adjust the structure’s solar exposure as needed to study the impact of sun position on energy use.
Flexlab is the first of its kind in both size and scope, and will allow researchers and manufacturers to test building systems and components under real-world conditions. They’ll be able to swap out systems and change configurations to test and monitor building components or combination of building systems, such as ventilation, lighting, walls, windows and shading.
A Berkeley Lab spokesman said a lighting test has been ongoing in an existing Flexlab building since 2013.