Next generation triple-pane windows provide builders with lower cost options and help homeowners conserve energy, reduce noise, and lower home energy bills.
«Lower costs, greater availability, and the drive to reduce carbon emissions are pushing us toward a tipping point where triple-pane windows start making a lot of economic sense,» said Kate Cort, a research economist at PNNL and program manager for ongoing field validation studies of triple-pane windows.
It’s no secret that a home’s windows can waste a lot of energy. They can leak air, and even the latest models of double-pane windows contribute significantly to energy use and cost in a home. For a new home, windows typically make up about 8% of the exterior surface area but are responsible for half of the heat loss or gain. This passive energy loss makes windows a major contributor to home heating and cooling costs.
Meanwhile, evidence for the energy and cost savings of triple-pane windows has been slowly building for years, since the first prototypes were introduced around 1989. Previous studies have shown that triple-pane windows are more energy efficient than the industry-standard double-pane variety, but market adoption has been slow due to cost and availability.
Those downsides are about to change, said Cort. A new generation of thin triple-pane windows are less expensive and can be more easily retrofitted into existing double-pane frames. As their name implies, triple-pane windows have three panes of glass that create a double-decker sandwich, which gets filled with an inert gas, such as krypton, that provides additional insulating power. These next-generation windows take advantage of economies of scale provided by the same advanced glass manufacturing technology that churns out thin but durable TV and computer screens.
Over the past three years, Cort and her colleagues have systematically evaluated the energy savings and economic factors that will determine how fast they get accepted by builders. This work was supported by the DOE Building Technologies Office and the Bonneville Power Administration.
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Materials provided by DOE/Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Original written by Karyn Hede. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.