Cost-Effective Triple Pane R5, and Low E Storm Windows – Available Now (text version)

Below is the text version of the Webinar titled "Cost-Effective Triple Pane R5, and Low E Storm Windows – Available Now," originally presented on June 22, 2010. In addition to this text version of the audio, you can you can access the presentation slides and a recording of the Webinar (WMV 22 MB).

Operator:
Welcome, and thank you for standing by. All participants will remain in a listen-only mode for the duration of today's conference. As a reminder, today's conference is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time.

I would now like to introduce today's host. Anthoney Perkins, you may begin.

Anthoney Perkins:
Thank you, Sherry. My name is Anthoney Perkins, and I'd like to welcome you today's Webinar, titled "Cost-Effective Triple Pane R5, and Low E Storm Windows – Available Now." The Webinar is presented by the Building Technologies Program at the U.S. Department of Energy. We're excited today to have with us six speakers who will be talking about the new volume purchase program for triple-pane and low E storm windows that allows builders and distributors to buy those windows at a competitive price.

But before we start, I do have a few housekeeping items I want to cover. First, as already mentioned, everybody is on listen-only mode today. We will have a question-and-answer session at the end of the presentation. To participate, you can submit your questions electronically throughout the Webinar. To submit a question, simply click on the Q&A link at the top bar of your screen. You can type of question in the box, and click Ask. Please be sure you click the Ask button, and not the symbol of the raised hand. Our speakers will address as many questions as time allows after their presentation.

Also, I wanted to point out there URL on the screen, www.buildings.energy.gov/webinars.html. On that Web page is a link to see today's slides, and also today's presentation is being recorded and a video of the presentation will be posted in the near future. And also a few past Webinars on the archive page, and from there, you can find out about future Webinars.

Finally, we have a few quick questions that we'd like to ask you to help us learn more about the audience and target our future presentations. We're gonna start with two right now, and then we will have two more at the end –

[Next Slide]
– Of the presentation before we go into the question-and-answer session. So the first question should be on your screen, and it's, "At your location, how many people are participating in today's Webinar?" So we'll give a few moments to answer that before we move onto the next one.

If you haven't voted, please do so now. We're about to close the question.

[Next Slide]
Okay. The next question should be on your screen now. "What best describes your affiliation or organization?" And we'll give you a few moments to look through the options and choose the best option. Give you a few more moments.

Okay. If you haven't voted, please do so quickly.

[Next Slide]
We're about to close the question.

Okay. And now I'll introduce our first speaker. Thank you for your participation in there on the questions.

Marc LaFrance will be your first speaker. He is the manager for Building Envelopes and Window, research-and-development programs at the U.S. Department of Energy Building Technologies program. Mr. LaFrance leads development of the next generation of these technologies. So with that, I'll turn the presentation over to you, Marc.

[Next Slide]
Marc LaFrance:
Thanks, Anthoney, and welcome, folks for joining us on our Webinar today. I'm really pleased to have this Webinar. It's the first time that in basically three or four decades that we actually have truly cost-effective triple-pane windows. So it's quite exciting.

[Next Slide]
Let me just give you a little background. The building sector of the economy is a huge part of the consumption of energy in the country. Almost 40 percent of the energy goes to buildings, a huge amount of carbon emissions. And so if you ever – if you're gonna try to mitigate carbon emissions and save energy, you have to address the building sector.

[Next Slide]
Okay. If we look at the building envelope, okay, basically it has a very large impact on the – of the total consumption. Fifty-seven percent of the energy of a building is impacted by the envelope. And this is $133 billion a year in cost in the economy of energy wasted through the envelopes. And 14 percent of the U.S. economy's energy, which is basically one-seventh of the energy in the country, is going through our envelope. So it's a major impact.

[Next Slide]
Okay. But besides today's activities on high insulating windows, we're also working on the next generation of windows. So trying to take windows all the way up to a U value of .1, which would be an equivalent of an R factor, an R10. So that's our long-term goal.

And we're also working on dynamic glass. So, many of you might have heard of some of the dynamic glass available today. Here's a nice little picture that shows you how you can have a dramatic difference in the solar heat gain co-efficient. And between the two of these technologies combined, highly insulating and dynamic windows, it can have a major impact on reducing the consumption of energy in buildings of the future. And so here on the right is a prototype that's been in the DOE lobby on display for a few years, but we're working to get this to be commercialized.

[Next Slide]
Okay. And so the big activities we've been working on is looking at all of the different policies that we can address to reduce the cost of highly insulating windows. And so we've done all of these things like demonstrations and production engineering, and, of course, the volume purchase program which we're talking about today. But all of these policies together have been worked on so that we can effectively transform the market. We want to get the triple-pane windows to become truly cost effective. And that's what we're trying to do. And so this is – today's activity is to talk about how we've achieved a major milestone.

[Next Slide]
Okay. So one of the first things that people say, "Well, what is cost effective?" And so when we look at the U factors, if you have a .25 which is a triple-pane window, but let's say a little bit lower-performing triple-pane window, or a .2 window, which is most of our windows in this program are either .22 or lower. Fixed ratings would be a .2 – I mean a fixed window versus an operable window, there is a difference there.

But, basically, if you look at $4.00 a square foot. So the price premium above a double-pane low E window, it would have to be less than $4.00 price premium. So for a 12-square-foot window that's about $48.00, or roughly about $50.00 a window. So you should be paying no more than $50.00 a window for it to be truly cost effective for a typical, not a – there's all types of window.

[Next Slide]
Okay. The next thing we've worked on quite a lot is a whole building demonstration where if you put in brand new construction, you put in all these triple-pane windows, you can significantly reduce the capacity requirements for the heating and air conditioning systems, as well as reduce the need for ductwork going to the permit of the building. So instead of moving the ductwork right underneath a window or above a window, you could put it to the core of shell and you could reduce cost there. So by reducing the cost of the HVAC system, reducing the cost of the ductwork, you can almost put in the highly insulating windows for the same price for building the entire home. So – and there's also improved comfort. And there'll be more information coming later about these details. Okay.

[Next Slide]
Oh, I'm sorry. Clicked a little too quickly.

[Next Slide]
[Laughs] Okay. Another thing we've been working is what we call production engineering. This has been a request for procurement, or solicitation for manufacturers to partner with the Department of Energy so that we can fund them to help develop high-volume factories so that we can find a way to provide these windows at a lower cost. And so GED Integrated Solutions won the first round of awards about a little over a year ago. It might have almost been two years ago now.

And then we just finished our most recent award that was announced last week, to Traco, to develop a commercial product for triple-pane windows at lower cost, no more than $4.00 a square foot. So these are – hopefully with the results of these projects, it'll be even more options coming in the future.

[Next Slide]
Okay. And many of you have heard about the tax credit. So there are tax credits out there currently. You only need to have a .3 U value – a U factor or .3 solar heat gain coefficient or below, and you can get 30 percent off the price of the window. But this expires in the end of this year. So there may be some policy work that needs to –

[Next Slide]
– Move ahead on that.

The other thing that we've looked at The Department of Energy had proposed for the Energy Star program for the next round which would be 2013 to 2014, a U factor that would be between .2 and .24. So, basically, a triple-pane window, which is kind of the same level of the performance that we're talking about today, that would become the
Energy Start criteria and which would really move things ahead.

So right now that's currently being managed by ETA, but DOE will work closely with them, they to help them in their analysis, and hopefully we can get to a level that's gonna be consistent within this performance level.

[Next Slide]
Okay. So how do we move forward on policies? So it would really help if the triple-pane windows become widely available, we would like to see possibly tax credits for that level of performance in 2011 to 2013 before a potential Energy Star level would take effect. We really would like to see utility programs, and there's a few starting up pretty soon here, but we really need to get more utility programs to help these windows come to the marketplace.

And then to keep the policy simple, let's just go with U factors, and let's not worry about solar heat gaining coefficient 'cause there's a lot of this discussion about solar heat gain coefficient is desirable. And it is variable, depending on if you're gonna have a passive heating house and whether you have overhangs or what the design is. But, really, to keep this really simple for cold climates, the U factor is much more important. It save so much more energy, and let's leave the solar heat gain coefficient up to the manufacturers to decide and for the consumers to decide what they wanna purchase. And so, basically, all of this together can really help transform the market.

And then the other thing you'd look at for policy would by dynamic windows. As dynamic windows are becoming much more available, having a policy to promote those in hot climates or mixed climates where you now have a very low solar heat gain when you want it, but in the mixed climate, you may still wanna have that passive heating in the wintertime. So there needs to be some more work on policy development.

[Next Slide]
Okay? And the other things there's been a concern about the use of the term R value versus U factor. First of all DOE has used the term R-value for windows only to non-technical audiences. We've done this many years in congressional budget request, and so we try to use that term just because most consumers don't understand the U factor at all. But we also have acknowledged and we're fully supported of the NRC. We actually used to fund the NFRC for various research activity, that all window performance has to be based on the whole window U factor, and not on a R-value. Although and R-value is the inverse of the U factor, it is quite complicated in the actual measurement process.

But another reason why we want to use the term – we've used the term R5 is to give people a general perspective on what the performance is for windows. Typical windows in homes today are R2 to R3, and yet we know that we have walls within the range of R10 to R20, and attics, R30 to R50. So when we talk about an R5, it's a significant improvement from an R3. But yet, it still gives people a perspective that windows are still a very large loss of energy in the building shell compared to the other components. And so that's the reason why we've used the term R5. But, again, all window performance has to be based on U factors – I mean, on U factors in accordance with the NFRC.

We also know that there are some companies that will report center of glass performance, such as they'll say we have an R15 window, which is very misleading. And then we also have other people do the same thing for U factor. They may put a center of glass. So remember that the key thing is to always have a whole-window performance in accordance with NFRC. And that's what – this program requires that compliance.

Okay. And I am gonna turn it over to Christian Kohler –

[Next Slide]
– the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Christian's been a researcher there for almost 15 years, and we're really glad to have him. He's actually a Dutch national, but he's here in the U.S. and I'm still gonna try to convince him to become a U.S. citizen. But anyway, we're glad to have Christian. So, Christian, please continue. Thanks.

Christian Kohler:
Thank you, Marc, and welcome, everybody. So I work at the Windows and Daylight Group at Lawrence Berkeley Lab where we're about 10-15 researchers that do window research, and a lot of our funding is from the Department of Energy. And we have been working with industry for over 30 years, so we have quite a bit of experience and history there. And we have a number of user facilities for testing and evaluation of window products, both thermally and optically. And we have a whole set of software tools that are used worldwide. And those software tools are what a lot of the performance numbers that you see that are talked about today like U factors and solar heat gain coefficients, those are calculated with that software.

[Next Slide]
I think it would be good first to talk about some of the performance indices that we are mentioning related to these high-performance windows. And the first one is U factor and it's an indicator of thermal resistance of a window, so how insulating it is. The units for U factor are BTUs per hour foot square Fahrenheit. And as Marc mentioned, we can also talk about R-value which is the inverse. So a U of .2 results in an R of 5.

The second aspect is the solar heat gain coefficient, and it indicates how much of the solar gain is making it into the space. If a window is illuminated by the sun, some of the solar heat makes it into the space, and some of it is rejected. It ranges from zero to one, and a higher solar heat gain coefficient means more solar gains.

The last performance index that I want to talk about is the visible transmittance. It also ranges from zero to one. And the higher visible transmittance means more daylight into the space. So this is an indirect energy performance number.

[Next Slide]
We should also talk briefly about what actually affects the heat transfer in windows. How do you get the specific low U factors. On the left here, I have a number of heat transfer mechanisms, radiation, convection, conduction. And on the right-hand side, some of the strategies that can be used to reduce – to affect these heat transfer mechanisms.

So here is drawn a simple window with a glazing system up here, and a very simple frame and space down here. So the first aspect, radiation in the glazing cavity we can affect that low E coatings, and those have been very common and readily available.

For conduction and convection, we can do both – use special gas fill, such as argon and krypton, and use multiple cavities. All the products for this volume purchase program are triple-glazed windows that have two cavities.

And then for the conduction in the frame and the spacer, we can use low-conduction spacers such as non-metallic foam-based spacers, or better frames and better frame design.

[Next Slide]
The range of U factors is quite large. Here on the left, you have a window with a U factor of zero. That would be no heat transfer to it at all. And on the right,we have a U factor of .5, which is a standard double-pane clear window.

The typical windows that we're seeing these days in the market are in this range of .3 to .35, and that's what's required by a lot of building codes, Energy Star, and the kind of classic double-pane low E products you see. What we're talking about today are products more in this range, the highly insulating windows, around the .2 U value.

[Next Slide]
Another approach is to use – for retrofit, is to use low-e storm windows. These are storm windows that have a special low-e coating on the glass that is a pyrolytic hard low-e coating that doesn't degrade under influences of anything, a non-sealed cavity. The important part is that the installation cost of a clear storm window and a low-e storm window are exactly the same, but the energy performance of a low-e storm window is much better. And that results in a better payback period.

[Next Slide]
We did a study in Chicago a few years ago with the Department of Energy and the National Association of homebuilders, and we looked at a number of houses where we installed clear storm windows and low-e storm windows. And we saw that the simple payback for the low-e coated storm windows was four to five years, and we saw a significant energy savings. Over a window season, we saw heating savings for clear storm over single of about 8 to 18 percent, and for low-e storms, of 19 to 27 percent. So at least 10 percent better savings for the low-e storm windows.

[Next Slide]
Marc mentioned that there's no requirement for solar heat gain in this program. It's just the U factor of a .22 or .20. But there is quite a range of solar heat gain coefficients available in the windows. And the question is what is the right solar heat gain coefficient. And that depends a lot on climate that you're building in and the house design. To simplify it, you can say that the solar heat gain through windows can help offset heating, and that's usually with east and south-facing windows. And you can increase your cooling load – it can increase it with west-facing windows. You can see what the energy impact is and what the right solar heat gain coefficient is.

[Next Slide]
Here, I'll show that for fixed windows in this program, this is a sampling, we see that the solar heat gains available in the program range from about .15 to .3, so you have a big range available of solar heat gain coefficients within this volume purchase program.

[Next Slide]
In closing, both, I want to summarize what Marc said, and my part is that this is a major point of affordable triple windows being available now will be a big step for highly insulating windows with this program.

There's a number of integrated policies at the DOE and EPA, such as the Energy Star, the tax credits, the volume purchase program, that can help with transforming the market. And we think it's important to talk about whole window performance, not just component, central glass. And over the next years, you'll see a lot of work from the Department of Energy, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, and our private industry research partners to generate the next generation of window technology.

[Next Slide]
Here's some contact info

And with that, I would like to introduce Nils Petermann, our next speaker. He's a project manager at the Alliance to Save Energy. He performs analysis and outreach for the Efficient Window Collaborative, which is a joint effort between Alliance to Dave Energy –

[Next Slide]
– University of Minnesota, and LBNL to promote energy efficient strategies for windows and residential and commercial buildings.

Nils Petermann:
Thank you, Christian. The Alliance to Save Energy is a nonprofit organization, supporting energy efficiency in all sectors of the economy. This ranges from industry to transportation, includes buildings. And my job at the alliance is to concentrate on windows.

I will briefly talk about energy saving and building design opportunities with highly insulating windows.

[Next Slide]
Christian's organization, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, has developed simulation tools that allows us to estimate the impact of windows on energy use. To make window energy assessments more accessible to the public, Berkeley Lab teamed up with the University of Minnesota, and with my organization, the Alliance to Save Energy, to create the Efficient Windows Collaborative.

The Efficient Windows Collaborative also has 80 members from the private sector, and nonprofit energy advocates that help us promote energy efficient windows through our website, efficientwindows.org, and sort of publications and workshops.

Our mission is to support the energy-efficient windows. But how do we know that a window is energy efficient? Well we can simulate on in a given climate different windows perform, and can compare different window options against each other. So, for example, as you see in the graph here on the Web site, you can distinguish between poor performers, good performers, better performance, and best performing windows.

We can also help purchasers specify windows with information on codes and voluntarily standards that test specific criteria for energy efficiency.

[Next Slide]
Now here you see some of the most prominent criteria for mixed and cold climates, at least, where highly insulating windows make the most sense. We can think of these as criteria for good, better, and best energy performance. Good energy performance is required by modern building energy codes such as the 2009 International Energy Conservation Code, or IECC.

The IECC requires a U factor of .35 in cold climate zones which basically means that low-e double-pane glass has to be used.

Even better energy performance is needed to meet the criteria of Energy Star for windows. Energy Star windows in the north, typically, have a U factor of .30 or less, which is only met by the best double-pane low-e windows on the market.

And finally, only some of the best performing windows in the overall market qualify for the volume purchase program for highly insulating windows, which calls for U factor of .22 or less. And triple-layer windows are needed for this.

[Next Slide]
How important are these U factor differences? Well, takes some look at simulated savings for a typical new house. In Massachusetts, if code-compliant windows that have a U factor of .35 are used instead of conventional dual-pane windows, with a U factor of around .50, the savings already amount to $60.00 to $100.00 a year. But if highly insulating windows with a U factor of .2 – I'm sorry, .22 are used instead, the savings at least double to $150.00 to $200.00. So here, the U factor counts a lot.

In a warmer climate like Dallas in Texas, by comparison, the U factor is not as big a factor. In Dallas, energy-efficient windows not only meet the U factor, it's even more important that they have a low solar heat gain coefficient. Windows with a U factor of .35 and a solar heat gain coefficient, for example, .25 in our example here, save a lot of money. But further improving the U factor by using triple-pane windows does not make as substantial a difference any more.

So a low U factor is beneficial in most climates, but makes the biggest difference where there is a substantial heating season. And what is more, with a substantial heating season, a low U factor also significantly improves the comfort in the home.

[Next Slide]
During the winter, window U factor has a great impact on comfort because the higher the U factor, the colder the interior window surface. And a cold surface is felt by the occupants. The conventional practice to avoid cold surfaces is to place heating registers near the windows. That's also called perimeter heating.

Windows with a very low U factor may stay warm enough throughout the winter so that perimeter heating may not be needed. This is a great opportunity as Marc has already mentioned in his presentation, that designers can shorter duct runs and save initial system costs.

[Next Slide]
Now whether a window stays comfortably warm throughout the winter is, of course, a somewhat subjective question. It depends on the occupants and the size of the windows, among other factors. But there are some standards that designers can use to make that assessment. For example, ISO 7730 is used, for example, by the Passiv Haus standards, which is used widely in Europe for super insulating buildings.

Now according to those criteria, the window surface temperature should not be more and five to nine degrees colder than the average room temperature, depending on the window size. And as you can see from the graphs on this page, the U factor of – a U factor of around .02 with highly insulating windows tends to meet such stringent comfort criteria even if there's no perimeter heating supplied near the windows, and if the outside temperatures as low as zero degrees.

[Next Slide]
Researchers from Enermodel Engineering and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory even estimate that highly insulating windows can ensure comfort without perimeter heating at temperatures as low as -15 degrees. They also found that shortening the duct runs and locating the registers more centrally saves energy because of reduced duct leakage and less fan electricity use. A more compact heating system is also cheaper than a conventional system, and this has offset some of the costs of highly insulating windows.

This concept was recently tried by the Wisdom Way Solar Village in Massachusetts, where several super-insulated homes were built at an affordable cost by Rural Development, Incorporated. Incremental costs for better insulation and highly insulating windows compared to common practice was about $7,000.00, and this allows the designers to install a much simpler heating system that was $4,500.00 cheaper than common practice.

The bottom line, the additional cost will be paid back in about four years due to heating cost savings. And these homes are comfortable. So integrated and smart design windows with a very low U factor can save a lot of energy in the long run and not be too expensive in terms of upfront cost.

[Next Slide]
In closing, I'd like to also mention that although I concentrated on the U factor in my presentation, the U factor is only one aspect of window performance. We've mentioned solar heat gain coefficient, but there are many others, such as the orientation of the windows, air leakage, the durability of windows, to name just a few.

Maybe we'll have time to –

[Next Slide]
– address some of these issues during the Q&A session, but first, I'd like to pass the mike to Graham Parker and Terry Mapes of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Graham Parker is senior staff engineering at PNNL, with 37 years of experience in the design, conduct, and analysis of field demonstrations and data collections project.

Terry Mapes is an engineer at PNNL, focusing on highly insulating and low-e storm windows.

Graham Parker:
Thank you, Nils. The oldest guy in the group welcomes all of you to this presentation from the Pacific Northwest where today it is beautiful, and all I can say is, it's about time. I'm gonna talk a bit about the solicitation process we went through to develop the volume purchase program, some of the details. And then Terry is going to provide you a walkthrough of the Web site, which is probably one of the most important parts of today's presentation.

[Next Slide]
A little bit about the timeline. It was about a year ago when we started talking to industry about a volume purchase program. We received numerous inputs from industry. We had many meetings with industry, and they helped us develop the specifications, which I'll talk about in a few minutes. The solicitation for the volume purchase program was issued in December of 2009, and the solicitation closed February 19 in 2010.

[Next Slide]
Just a summary of the final specifications for the high performance windows and the low-e storm windows. For the high performance windows, we had a U factor specification, and air leakage specification. We required certifications to be provided to us, and required warranties.

For the low-e storm windows, we had an emissivity specification, a glass thickness specification, provision of a structural test that was to be undertaken by the suppliers. The low-e storm needed to be registered on the International Glazing Database, which is an LBNL-kept database. I'll provide the URL of that for those of you who are interested. And the warranties, again, were required in order to participate in the program.

[Next Slide]
For the high performance window certification, there was both a thermal and a structural certification that was to be required. The NFRC label is to appear on the window. And for the structural, we required a performance creative R25 or better. And we also give you a listing there of the authorized certification organizations that the manufacturers or the sellers were required to provide us certification from.

[Next Slide]
On the low-e storm window requirements, talked a little about structural, the ANSI/AAMA 1002 was required. Registration in the International Glazing Database, and there is the URL for that database. And this is what we used to verify that the emissivity value was, indeed, .22 or less.

No certification programs, however, were required for the low-e storm windows.

[Next Slide]
Okay. The minimum requirements to respond to the solicitation that was issued in December. First of all, you had to respond by the deadline of February 19th. You must meet the minimum specifications that I listed on the slide with the specifications. The submittals by the manufacturers or by the dealers or by the vendors, was not based on the bid prices. In other words, you could bid whatever price you felt comfortable with for these windows. Awards were not based on the lowest price. Whatever the price was bid, was what the price is that's listed.

You must submit at least one window product meeting the minimum specifications. And then after that window product is submitted and you become listed on the Web site, you can submit additional window products if you'd like, and they can be added throughout the program period. But in order to get in the program, you had to have at least one.

And then lastly, we had to have a compliance letter at the time of bid that said that you were gonna comply with all the specifications.

[Next Slide]
In the response of the solicitation, we had 62 vendors that submitted bids and they met the minimum requirements. We were calling these – we called these and still call them qualified vendors. There's kind of a listing breakdown of those vendors.

So if you are a bidder that submitted a proposal to the solicitation and you met the criteria, you became a qualified vendor. But you still were not listed on the Web site until certain other requirements were provided to us. And then when that happened, you became a certified vendor.

[Next Slide]
After your bids were submitted, we provided a checklist to all of those who had submitted of the items that were required to become certified and then become listed on the Web site. So we asked that you provide a warranty, and that the vendors provided a URL address where the windows would be sold from, provide a signed agreement letter which was an agreement between the vendor and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

For high performance windows, we wanted the thermal and structural certification report submitted to us. For the low-e storm windows, you must be listed in the IGDB database and provide the ANSI/AAMA test reports.

[Next Slide]
Once we'd determined that all of those requirements were met, you became a certified vendor and then you would be listed on the Web site. There are currently 40 certified vendors listed on the Web site. And the red letters at the bottom of the slide is the URL of the Windows Volume Purchase Web site. Please note that it's .org.

[Next Slide]
Okay. Just a little bit of a summary of the Web site itself. The minimum order is 15 to 20, 15 for retrofit, 20 for new construction windows. One – a minimum order of one for sliding glass doors, a minimum order of 20, for low-e storm windows. We ask the vendors to please honor all requests which meet the minimum order requirements. Prices are shown. Term maximum. They're bid by each vendor for each united inches category. And you'll, and Terry will show you that we have a bifurcated or we have shown the window products by UI category, which is united inches.

The prices or not listed by vendor, and the prices may not be increased over the period of the program. But, of course, vendors can always decreases prices, and we, of course, would encourage that. The prices for the window frame and frame type and color that's listed, that's on the Web. And the price does not including shipping, installation, or other added features. We've also had a separate area of the Web site where we list the vendors and the window products that they sell, which is simply a listing.

Delivery area for the products would be in North America, and that is provided, or the vendors will deliver, which will include, as you notice, North America includes Canada.

[Next Slide]
So, for you who are interested in purchasing, anyone meeting the minimum order requirements is welcome to purchase products. Vendors may choose to sell less than the minimum order quantity, but they are not bound by the bid price if they do so. There may be a price premium for less than 15 or 20, or 20 low-e storm windows.

Prices are not listed by vendor. I want to emphasize that. Buyers will need to do some exploring in the URLs of the vendors for the selling prices. And this was an agreement we had – that DOE had with the vendors at the start of the program that we would not list their prices on our Web site.

And vendors may offer other window frame material or frame color or other options on the windows that were bid under this program, and the prices for these alternative frame materials or color or features would be negotiated between the buyer and the vendor. The base price is what is listed, and the base price is for a particular frame type and particular color.

[Next Slide]
So I'm gonna turn this over to Terry, who's gonna walk you through the Web site.

Terry Mapes:
Good morning, attendees. As Graham mentioned –

[Next Slide]
– I'm going to show you – give you a back-end walkthrough on the Web site. Just to let you know, we are under construction. Even at the moment, we are adding new features every day. So this is how the Web site looks as of today. And you can expect some new features to be added in the coming weeks.

If you're new to the program and you have a lot of questions you want to try to catch up on some information, you may want to start here. At the top you'll see a number of different categories. These are links to DOE-based Web sites which have an awful lot of information. As I said, if you're looking to catch up on the program or if you're not finding answers to your questions here at the Web site, you may wanna check those links out. And if you're still not able to find the answer to your questions, we have some contact information down here at the bottom of the homepage. You can see there the R-5windows@energetics.com address. We do read all of those e-mails. Of course, we're not able to respond to all of them, especially the mean ones. But we will make an effort to get back any of the legitimate questions that we see in there.

On the left side of the Web site, you're gonna see four different icons over here. We have eight different window types in the program. We have a pulled our five patio doors and low-e storm windows out of the groups into their own categories. The other six are contained within the categories for new construction and for retrofit construction.

I'm gonna go ahead and start here. Let's just go ahead and pull retrofit construction out. Here's the six different window types that I talked about, in and to the R5 patio doors and the low-e storm windows. Those are the eight types of windows we have in the program right now.

[Next Slide]
When Phase 2 begins early next year, we're going to consider adding some other types of windows, such as awnings. But at the moment, these are the only eight types of windows that we'll be able to have in the program.

I'm gonna go ahead and pull it as a example. I'm gonna click on double-hungs here so in retrofit double-hungs.

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You're gonna see different categories of UI ranges here. As Graham mentioned, UI, of course, stands for united inches. That's the width and the height combined. So if you're looking for, say, for example, a window that's 2 feet by 4 feet, that's gonna be 24 plus 48 inches, 72 inches. You're gonna come down here in the 71-80 UI range category. And the first thing you can right here is that you're gonna see there's a price range of $146.00 to $850.00. Those are the maximum prices of all of the participants of the program who have retrofit double-hung windows bid into the program. And I'm gonna explain that maximum prices a little more in detail in just a moment.

Right now, I'm gonna go ahead and open up that category.

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You can see the list here. Pretty extensive list. Not all the lists are this extensive. Some of them may have three or four vendors listed. This one is has as you can see, probably upwards of 30. There's four different columns you'll see up here. We give you information about the frame type, if that's an important decision for you. Most of – I would say 90 to 95 percent of the products you're gonna see in this program are gonna be vinyl-based windows. There are some – also some wood and some aluminum ones, a possibility of some fiberglass ones in the future. But most of the ones you'll see will be vinyl.

One of the minimum requirements for all of the products in the program was that they had to be at least the color white. Some of the companies offer the products in other colors. You'll see an indication here of whether or not you're able to get a color other than white. They may charge extra for the other colors. They may not charge extra. That's something you're gonna have to speak to the vendor about and decide.

Third column here, these are the actual live links to the Web site for each of the companies. These are in alphabetical order at the moment, but we will be changing the order around periodically throughout the program. I'll come back to this in just a moment.

And you'll see finally, the last category here is shipping regions. You'll see these regions are numbered one through ten, and also Canada. If you go down to the very bottom, some of the text you'll see down here, you'll see a link in the middle of this text called Shipping Regions. I'm gonna go ahead and click on that. There's ten different regions here –

[Next Slide]
– within the United States. Here's the map that you can look at here. Perhaps if you're looking for windows on the Web sites, the first thing you're gonna wanna do is go to this part of the decision-making process and determine which state you went them sent to. Let's say, for example, you want 'em sent to New York. You'll see that's in Region No. 2 over here. I'm just gonna use the back browser button.

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And now you look down on here on the shipping region list. You'll see there's a few of 'em, say, for example, right now here, NT Windows, Regions 4, 6, and 7. They don't even ship to New York. So that'll save you a little bit of time, anyway. If you know which region you need to be shipped to, you might be able to miss some of these. But presumably, what you're gonna do at that time is you're gonna go back to the top of the list and you're just gonna start clicking on links.

And now at this point, there is a point that I need to emphasize very, very important is that this is not set up the same as like an amazon.com Web site, or buy.com Web site where you're just gonna be able to go there and in a matter of minutes, find the prices for every you want.

I'll tell you right now ahead of time, you're going to need to do some research. The way that we have the pricing structure set up, the agreement that we have with the vendors, we do not show the exact price for each one of them. There's a lot of different optional considerations for them. One thing you can do, for example, you'll see in this 71 to 80 category, you'll a link over here for full price list.

[Next Slide]
For this particular list, these are all the prices that were given to us. And, again, these do not includes taxes. They do not include shipping or installation. So these – you can consider these list prices. Some of the manufacturers that have to go through a large and extensive dealer network had to bid in larger prices to make sure that none of their dealers were selling it higher than these prices. Even though they might have it listed as $800.00, you might be able to get that for a lot less than what it's listed here.

So once again, I cannot emphasize enough that you're going to need to do some research. You're gonna need to go to these company Web sites. You're gonna need to contact them when we're talking about volume windows and the amount of money that you're going to invest, it's probably worth your time to do this.

I'm gonna pull up an example here, Accu-Weld. They have a terrific Web site, actually.

[Next Slide]
This is one that they put together specifically for the R5 program. Not all of the vendors on the list do have a specific Web site for the program. Some of them will take you back to their company's home site and you're gonna have to navigate around that site to try to find the information you're looking for. But once again, you're gonna have different experiences with different vendors. But once you do the research, you should be able to get some prices.

[Next Slide]
If you're having problems getting prices from most of these dealers, by all means, use this contact information and contact us and let us know that because we don't want it to be impossible for you to find these prices, either.

[Next Slide]
As I mentioned, for example, you can go to say like patio doors, and you're gonna see different sizes here. A smaller list than the one that we saw before. These are all of the companies that have bid in patio doors to the program.

Okay. And then once again, if you don't find any answers, look at some of these Web sites, say for like commercial buyers, these are DOE-based Web sites. There's lots of information in here that'll catch you up on anything if you're looking to find some answers to questions that you didn't find from the previous Web site.

[Next Slide]
Also, going back to Phase 2, I noticed when we asked one of the original questions, there were a lot of manufacturers and suppliers –

[Next Slide]
– that are part of our attendees. And I'm taking you back to our original presentation here.

[Next Slide]
Okay. Phase 2 is something that we're gonna begin early next year. Right now, we're in Phase 1. As Graham mentioned, we have had about 62 different proposals submitted to the program in February before the deadline. We have about 40 of those vendors have their products now listed on the Web site. We're going through the certification process to get more of them. So you may actually see a few more products appearing in the coming weeks.

Until Phase 2 begins, we will not be allowing any more vendors into the program. We do, however, have the option of being able to allow you to talk to a couple of dealers who made it into the program before the February deadline. And they may be able to show your products in sort of a piggyback style until you're able to submit some of your own proposals in Phase 2.

When Phase 2 comes around , we're gonna re-discuss a few of the things that we want to do. As I mentioned before, we're talking about adding additional window types. We're talking about possibly considering commercial applications. We may change the
U factor. As Marc, mentioned, one of the long-term goals for DOE is to get to a U factor of .1. We may continue working in that direction. We may include for solar heat gain coefficient certain requirements, raising the structure performance, etcetera, etcetera.

If you are a buyer – excuse me, a vendor who's interested in getting into the program before Phase 2, going back to the Web site, the contact information that I mentioned there before, you should just go ahead and send us an e-mail, and what we'll probably do is either put you in touch with one of the dealers that are in the program, or we'll try to get you on –

[Next Slide]
– the list where we will actually contact you as we approach Phase 2, and give you the opportunity to join the program at that time.

So that concludes the walkthrough on the Web site. I anticipate a number of questions here at the end of the Webinar, and we'll try to go ahead and get back to those. And I'm gonna go ahead and introduce the next person up is gonna be Jason Bogovich.

Jason is with the Intergovernmental Deployment Policy and Partnership, developmental manager at Energetics Incorporated. He provides outreach, grassroots coordination on economic housing and energy-related issues with government agencies and private sectors.

Jason Bogovich:
Yeah. Thanks, Terry, and thanks, Graham. Again, my name's Jason Bogovich, and I work for Energetics. I've been involved with this program for over a year and a half. As most of you know that the concept was developed over two years ago. And, finally, we launched the program on May 27th in Washington DC at the National Association of Homebuilders at their headquarters.

[Next Slide]
As we move forward, I'm gonna – we look at this windows-only purchase a political campaign. The R5 and low-e storm windows are the candidates. They're great candidates because there is a window of savings that can benefit a lot of various stakeholders in the country. I'm gonna talk about the grassroots marketing campaign, and also talk about the regional workshops, and also briefly touch point on marketing material and Walt Zallas from our team will cover the needs auditing tool system that we recently just did a demonstration in the state of Pennsylvania.

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Right now, we have great products at the right time. R5 and low-e storm windows offer both superior cost and energy savings and are arriving on the mainstream market at the right time. As you know that there's been funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for the HUD's Neighborhood Stabilization Program, the NSP, DOE's Weatherization Program. There's been increased funding R&D for windows. The White House has pushed very heavily on the Middle Class Task Force, the Recovery Through Retrofit Initiative. And one of the main items that they point out is that the consumers do not have enough information to make educated purchases on products.

As for the focus on the White House itself through the president, he wants to weatherize one million homes annually. You also have the tax credits, and you also have the Homestar Program, which is still being under consideration in the House and Senate. And pretty much there's a green edge the public is looking for. So it truly is a great time for a great product.

[Next Slide]
As we move forward, our message will be window savings. We're gonna push that message down through grassroots – a grassroots marketing campaign.

[Next Slide]
And another thing that we approach through any grassroots organization is that you need to have boots on the ground. Over the past year and a half, we'd developed relationships with stakeholders that represent weatherization agencies, builders, contractors, schools, universities. We're gonna help – those stakeholders and partners are gonna help us get the message out, down to the ground, down to the decision-makers that make the decisions on whether to purchase R5 windows, to implement them into policy.

[Next Slide]
Here's a list of some of our partners. As you can see, these are the partners that we've developed over the past year and a half. You can see that we have a couple homebuilders, Clayton Homes. We have a nonprofit, Youthbuild USA, Habitat for Humanity. And we also have the National Community Action Foundation, and they represent all weatherization agencies in the country. So we've done a great job on focusing targeted stakeholders to get them on board so they could help educate the consumers on the ground;

[Next Slide]
Of course, our audience, which I mentioned, again, we're gonna focus on the homebuilders, contracts, weatherization agencies, apartment owners/operators, nonprofit agencies, state and local governments, public and private education facility managers, and public housing authorities. And, of course, we want to be transparent through the entire process, through the marketing campaign. So any suggestions, any recommendations, we definitely value the input. And we're gonna be transparent through the entire process.

[Next Slide]
With our partners and stakeholders, we plan on doing three regional workshops that will target the Midwest, northeast, Mid Atlantic. Each workshop will focus on educating the consumers – or partners at the ground level about this program. We will have a press conference. We will have some of our stakeholders are currently utilizing our five windows in the current marketplace and low-e storm windows. And simply, these regional workshops will educate the local decision-makers. They will cover multi states, and we're currently looking at Chicago, Boston, Harrisburg, and we're also considering other municipalities. So if you have any recommendations, let us know.

[Next Slide]
And pretty with the marketing material, we have developed fact sheets. We'll continue to develop fact sheets. And if anyone has any recommendations, please let us know. Of course, we will continue to update both Web sites. We will also – one of the key factors for driving the success of this program is, of course, our partnerships, but also utilizing trade magazines, eNewsletters through the entire process to educate the consumer, to educate the stakeholders that will be involved through the entire year.

[Next Slide]
I'm gonna – as for the completing marketing, here are some of the targets that we have targeted. We plan on being very aggressive getting out there, getting out on the street marketing it. And if anyone has any suggestions on good opportunities to market, please let us know.

[Next Slide]
And I'm gonna go ahead and introduce Walt Zallas. He's gonna cover the weatherization effort in Pennsylvania using RESFEN and NEAT to support weatherization.

Walter Zallas:
Hi. This is Walter Zallas. I work with Jason at Energetics. I've been helping with the marketing outreach efforts, and I also did some of the NEAT analysis for Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania originally showed some interest in these more energy-efficient windows systems and the weatherization program. So LBNL and Energetics provided a RESFEN and NEAT analysis for them. NEAT is the National Energy Audit Tool. It's an Oakridge National Lab approved weatherization tool.

Sort of our overall results from the NEAT program included recommendations to upgrade all single-pane and metal-frame clear double-pane windows with low-e storm windows, and updating to an R5 window when a window must be replaced due to health, safety, or structural concerns. This is sort of the replacing a window anyway scenario. Analysis actually derived a maximum average incremental cost of $8.90 per square foot over a basic code window when using an R5 window for that scenario.

Also, price points were derived for the replacement of existing single-pane wood frame or metal frame clear double-pane windows and an R5 window, and I'll get a little bit more into those results.

[Next Slide]
For results of the low-e storm windows, you can see the parameters there. We used the same pricing as LBNL did in their RESFEN analysis, and you can see the rest of it there, 15-year lifetime, which is conservative. We used both furnace deficiencies of 94.7 percent, which is also very conservative, and 80 percent and natural gas heating.

For all 37 homes we evaluated across the four cities of Scranton, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh, low-e storm windows were always selected as a qualified measure with an SIR substantially higher than, an SIR being a savings to investment ratio. And you can see there some of the numbers. So they range from –

[Next Slide]
– 1.4 to 2.2 for single-pane. For double, it was 1.3 to 2.1.

Getting to the results for the R5 windows, we, again, for that replace anyway scenario, we used parameters of a $5.00 incremental cost over basic code windows across those four cities I mentioned. Our conservative first efficiency of 94.7, natural gas heating and a 20-year lifetime. For all 37 homes an SAR was found substantially higher than 1, again, ranging from 1.6 to actually 3.0. This is, again, this is for the replace anyway scenario when you're only looking at $5.00 incremental cost over basic code windows.

Finally, we also derived price points to reach an SAR of one when upgrading to R5 windows for both the double clear pane windows and the single-pane wood frame windows. For this, we had to independently evaluate the R5 windows without considering the storm windows to come to these price points. And these, the max price point below to reach an SAR of one across the four cities.

[Next Slide]
If you want to reach out and help us, you can – for marketing or any questions about the NEAT analysis, there's our e-mail addresses and our phone numbers. And with that, I will turn it back over to Anthoney.

Anthoney Perkins:
Thank you very much. As we said, now we're gonna go ahead and follow up with some additional polling questions before we start the Q&A session. So first up is going to be, "What were you hoping to learn –?"

[Next Slide]
"– from today's Webinar?" And that question should be on your screen now. So if you would take a few moments to look at the options and then choose the best answer.

I'll give you another moment or so.

We're gonna go ahead and close this question. We'll go onto the next one.

The final question is, "How satisfied were you –?"

[Next Slide]
"– with today's Webinar?" And could we get all the speakers to mute their phones, please? Thank you. I'll give you another few moments to look through the questions.

If haven't answered, please do so. We're gonna go ahead and close this.

[Next Slide]
Okay. Now we'll go ahead and go into the question-and-answer session. As we mentioned, we asked everybody to submit their questions online. So each of our speakers will address as many questions as time allows. We're gonna go ahead and start with Marc, and then we'll go through the speakers in the order at which they spoke, I believe.

So, Marc, if you'll go ahead and start.

Marc LaFrance:
Yeah, okay. Great. Thanks, Anthoney. Okay. We received several questions, and I'll start off with a couple of 'em. One of the first questions was about codes and will these technologies make the way into codes. I mean, for the most part when you look at energy policy, you have the research and development and then we have what we call market introduction, which is kind of the volume purchase program. Then you have like a mainstream deployment program like a voluntary program like Energy Star that's gonna administered by EPA. And then you have mandatory building codes, or if you're talking about other products like appliance standards. So, really, at this point in time, we're really trying to get these triple-pane windows into the voluntarily programs, into the mainstream voluntarily programs. And then eventually, when they get a stronger presence on a wide-scale basis, then it would be more appropriate to be mandating them into the building code.

So I think you'll see them in future years going into codes, but probably be a little bit of a delay for that.

There was another question regarding what kind of incentives for residential and commercial. And Jason did mentioned the Homestar type of program that's being debated on Capitol Hill for funding for residential programs, which would actually give additional incentives for the entire home, which would be another way to get incentives for windows, along with the entire building.

There are currently commercial building tax credits available, and with high performance windows, you can help – that can help you meet that criteria for the commercial tax credit. So there are commercial tax credits available.

Let's see. There was one other question about what can they do to support the program for the future. And I guess the one question that comes you would be from a policy standpoint, is regarding Energy Star. So, for example, if people wanna see more traction, have they provided comments or will they provide comments to EPA regarding levels for the next setting point for Energy Star.

So, for example, what should be the U value for the next round of Energy Star. And so anybody that really encourages these types of window performance levels to be in there, should be contacting the EPA and let them know about that.

Okay. And then the next question, which I'm going to – it's really gonna fall under probably Nils' answer. I know, Anthoney, we're gonna go a little bit out of the order, but it was involving cost-effectiveness. And I'll just quickly say a little bit, then I'll turn it over to Nils to describe a little bit more. And, basically, when we're talk cost-effectiveness, we're looking at the purely from an energy standpoint. And so, for example, when put in – when you install a new window, compared to a different type of window – so it doesn't matter whether you have a single-pane window already, that would be the large energy savings.

But if you had to put in a double-pane low-e, window, which is code complaint, let's say. And you had decided to put in a triple pane window, there's gonna be additional energy benefit for that. And so what we do is we calculate that energy benefit over the life of the window, and then we come up with the economics. Now Nils did a lot of this analysis, so he can tell you more details on that. But I just wanted to get the – so that's what we call the – to be cost-effective from an energy policy standpoint. But we don't look at the additional benefits to the consumer or any other non-energy benefits.

So I'm gonna turn it over to Nils, and then there's also a question, Nils, about coming in regarding the system impacts about the entire – if you're doing an entire building retrofit – I mean a brand new construction what are the impacts. So maybe you can address that as well, Nils, okay?

Nils Petermann:
Okay. Thank you, Marc. All right. So regarding the cost-effectiveness, those who were simulations using the residential tool, devised by Lawrence Berkeley that Christian also quickly mentioned during his presentation. And with that tool you can simulate energy use in typical home and compare different window options, what energy savings – incremental energy savings you can get by installing better windows.

The savings that were simulated this way, are purely everybody savings and do not include any offset in the heating and cooling system. Well, one important – Marc mentioned that we're looking at lifetime's savings, so what's important some sense about the discount rate and the window lifetime, obviously, and also energy prices. In terms of energy prices, we were I would say very conservative in not assuming any price escalation in terms of the discount rate that was – or those graphs that were shown, we assumed an 8-percent annual discount rate. And window lifetime was assumed to be 25 years. So those numbers, we could also use slightly different numbers. I've also done some analysis with 20-year lifetime and price escalation assumptions which come to literally even less conservative result. So those are the basics that were used there.

Now as Marc mentioned, there's another question regarding simplified HVAC systems. And that, of course, is a large opportunity to save up-front costs in a new construction. Now the question was is there anywhere to get more information on this. And the information that I got on the subject was on the one hand, maybe through the Passiv Haus Institute and they have released some information on this in English, but most of it, actually, in German in which I read in detail, but I don't know that all of that is available yet in English.

However, there's a nice article that I would recommend by one Canadian and one British researcher, Danny Harvey and Mark Siddall. It's in Green Building Magazine, a British magazine. The article is called Advanced Glazing Systems, and the Economics of Comfort. That one summarizes very well what the comfort considers are. It mentions the international standard that gives some design recommendations. So I think that's a good starting point. There are other resources online.

I had a few other questions. For example, what builders could to, to effectively communicate cost savings to the customers. And, yes, that's a very good question because now here we talked about the opportunities for new customer action, and how highly insulating windows can provide the payback. But unless the builder is able to communicate that to the customer, of course, it does not really help the builder much to use those window. So, of course, programs such as Energy Star for home or any of the sustainable designs standards, both helped to some extent to do the marketing. On the other hand, we at the Efficient Windows Collaborative also currently working on fact sheets that really make the savings opportunity more visible to customers.

There's already fact sheets on our Web site if you want to check out efficientwindows.org, that show – that compare different window options, one next to the other. And that could help deliver that information to the customers, but we're working on improving those further.

I'm gonna answer just a couple of more questions before turning it over to the next speaker. But there was one question about the baseline window use in the savings analysis that I showed in my slides. That was compared to double-pane clear glass windows, so to conventional double-pane windows. And what I showed was low-e window savings and triple-pane low-e window savings. So compared to windows that would be more typical during the 1980s and '90s, and what energy-efficient windows can save relative to those.

And the last question was, "How do the windows technologies in this program and the R5 volume purchase program, compare to technologies used in Europe currently, and whether Europe does have that level of performance as a code."

Well, comparisons between North American and Europe are not as easy in terms of the
U factor because that's not only the – that's the difference between metric and IP units, but also just the way the U factor is established, follows a somewhat different standard. So it's not an apples-to-apples comparison. But we can say that, of course, voluntarily standards like Passiv Haus, they are encouraging, very highly insulating windows

Was probably on average a little more stringent than what's required through this program, but then you also have to say that in some of the countries, like Sweden, Switzerland, Germany, that triple-pane windows have had a larger market share for quite awhile. And that also partly has to do with manufacturers in those countries serving only one climate, so they can concentrate on highly insulating windows. Whereas, in the U.S., obviously, a manufacturer would have to deal quite different climates.

Okay. With this, I would like to turn it over to the next speaker. That would be Graham Parker.

Graham Parker:
Okay. Thanks, Nils. A couple questions we received that I will try to answer. One of our listeners asked us to clarify how the vendors got their prices lower and what compensation the program has provided to the vendors. First of all, the vendors' prices are quite wide ranging. There are some that are quite low, and there are some that are a little higher for any given window product. So the range clearly represents vendors' price structures.

There was no government or other subsidy provided to the vendors of this program. It simply was done based on kinda basic market conditions. And we know that the manufacturers have been working for several years to lower their price points to improve production process, and, thereby, lowering overall costs of high performance window and low-e storm windows.

This is really similar to what we've observed over the last 15 years in DOE what we call market transformation programs where we simply use market forces and revelation of prices for manufacturers to bring products – high performance products to the market at low prices. This has worked with compact fluorescent lamps. It's worked with super-efficient apartment-size refrigerators. And it's also worked early on with family size front-loading washing machines.

Another listener asked us, "Can a homeowner purchase from this program as long as the homeowner meets the minimum requirement?" Certainly, a homeowner can purchase as long as the minimum purchase amount is met. And, again, those purchase amounts are based on total number of windows, so it could be total retrofit windows, total new construction windows, or it could be total combination of retrofit plus new construction windows from any given vendor, or a total low-e storm windows. As long as you meet those minimums, you can purchase.

The vendors may also sell windows at less than the minimum quantities, but the prices for those windows may be different than the prices that were bid into the program. So just be aware of that.

I think I'm gonna turn it over to Terry because he's got a couple of questions that have come in that he can answer.

Terry Mapes:
Thank you. I think I've got three questions on my plate here. The first question somebody asked about vendors getting involved in the program, joining the program now that we've had the deadline of February. I just wanna be absolutely clear about this. Right now, we are in Phase 1 of the program. We are not allowing any new manufacturers or vendors into the program until Phase 2, which will be early next year. There's two different options you have at this point. Number one is you can give us your name and we can put it on a list and we will get back to you as we approach Phase 2, and you'll be able to submit a proposal early next year.

The other option is that we do have a couple of dealers in the program right now. These dealers have listed products from a number of different manufacturers, and they can add your products to their list. So as I mentioned during the presentation, you sort of piggyback in on their proposal until Phase 2 comes around, and then you can leave them and submit your own proposal. But right now, we are not allowing any new vendors into the program until Phase 2 begins.

The second question I had was a question about moisture intrusion being a problem in terms of the sealants that we use in double-pane windows and whether or not that problem has been solved for the triple-pane windows. Basically, we have some of the most stringent requirements in terms of structural certifications for this program. We wanted to make sure that the products that come through the program we're extremely high quality. Now previous to this program, you could go out and buy a double-pane window that was – it had gone through the highest standards and the highest certification process and you wouldn't have had any of those moisture intrusion problems. Likewise, you could have gotten a double-pane window previously that hadn't gone through the process, and they could have the problems.

In this program, the only thing we can tell you is that all of the products have gone through the highest standards known to the industry in terms of air and water leakage, and structural performance. And so this should not be the problem that you would have experienced if you had bought a double-pane window that hadn't gone through that process.

And then, finally, the last question I've got, a pretty good question. "Does the buyer get a financial advantage to purchase through this program rather than purchasing a package of windows independently?" It's kind of a tricky question to answer, actually. As Graham mentioned, there has been no compensation to the vendors to lower their prices. What we've done is we've created though a combination of competition between the vendors and the lure of volume sales. We've hopes that they would enter this program and offer lower prices than they had previously been offering.

We don't know. Some of the vendors may have lowered their prices for the sake of the program. Some of the vendors may not have lowered. Them. I can tell you right now, some of the larger vendors simply will not deal to you directly. They won't do that to own dealership network. They will force you to buy their windows through a dealer which is going to have some kind of a markup. And so, ultimately, the answer that I can give you to that question is with some of the vendors, the prices will be better through this program, and with some of the vendors, it won't. And once again, it's all gonna come back to having to go to the Web site and do the research to find out the answer to that question.

Marc LaFrance:
And, Terry, this is Marc. I just want to add on a little thing there. Okay. So the question is, is if somebody can find a window that's not in the program that's a lower cost, that's what DOE calls success. The whole point of this program is to stimulate the market and to try to get large volume buyers to buy the triple-pane windows, to get manufacturers to get some sales so it reduces their risk in offering price-competitive products so that the whole market change so that if there's vendors out there now that miss this program and they come to us and they say, "Well, how do we get into the program?" we say, "Fine, you can try to go into Round 2. But if you want to go out there and offer your product available at low prices and market it, hey, great. That's what this is all about." So just wanted to add that in there.

Terry Mapes:
Okay. And before I turn it over to Jason, I just saw one new question came in about the proposed U factor for Phase 2. We haven't really even started discussing exactly what kind of requirements we're gonna have in Phase 2. We've talked about some of the things we may want to discuss. We are gonna go back to the industry and talk to the manufacturers, find out what's available, what they're willing to do with us. And DOE, of course, is gonna have to make some decisions on how far forward they wanna go with the program. But at this time, there hasn't been discussion about where the U factor's gonna be for Phase 2.

So with that, I'm gonna go ahead and turn it over to Jason.

Jason Bogovich:
Thanks, Terry. There's a few questions that we're gonna go ahead and take care of. The first one is it says –NARI, the National Association of Remodeling Industry, and asked, "Are they participating?" We have been sending information over to them. They were made aware of the – about the program. And we also sent out e-mails to the local state chapters. So we are definitely gonna be working closely with NARI.

And as for there was a question regarding – it says, "Jason, you went through the analysis of the install cost and PA pretty quickly. Was the result a very similar cost for small windows versus R5 windows?" Walt could answer that.

Walter Zallas:
Yeah. For the analysis using NEAT, I assume that it's referring to the tables for the install window cost when trying to find the price point for an SAR of one, upgrading to R5 windows. We did not do a similar analysis like that for the low-e storm windows simply because they reached an SAR of one, with the cost estimates we had used. There was no need to figure out what the price point would be for that.

I can tell you what the data points were as far as the average cost that we used, and that was the $7.85 per square foot, and $15.00 per window for installation cost for low-e storm windows. But for the analysis as far as independently determining what it took to get to an SAR of one, we did not do that for low-e storm windows.

Jason Bogovich:
And another question that came in, it says, "I did not see any outreach to Native American housing authorities."That's an area that we would definitely love to target. We're trying to target all public housing. We're gonna be working with HUD, so there's gonna potentially be able to work with HUD on addressing that issue. If you have any ways of directly marketing or directly doing educating that area, please contact us. Let us know.

There was another question that asked about if we could do a presentation in New York City. We're always looking for opportunities to be able to target large audience. And, of course, New York is an area of interest. So if there's an opportunity in New York, please send us an e-mail and we will look at the – look at our schedule and try to work something out.

Anything else? Let's see here. I think that's the – there's another question regarding reaching out to working with the box stores. We initially have not worked with the box stores. We've primarily been targeting the homebuilders, schools, contractors, weatherization agencies, public housing authorities, that group. If it would effective to target that group, if people recommend that, then that's something that we could definitely look into and pursue.

But besides that, I don't see any other questions for us right now. So I guess I could turn it back to Marc?

Marc LaFrance:
Yeah. I'll just touch base real quickly, Jason. Thanks. So there's a few questions, a couple about climate. So first of all, highly insulating windows are mostly for a mixed and a cold climate. Not really for a southern climate. So for a southern climate, you really want to reduce your solar heat gain, low solar heat gain windows are a good option today. Certainly putting on exterior shading, awnings and things like that is a good way to reduce the heat gain. Through design, eliminating windows from the west side of the dwelling, if you can/ but, also, the long-term strategy there is gonna be the dynamic windows.

If you can imagine solar heat gain of windows today that are typically around .3, the best available is probably about .25. But dynamic windows get it all the way down to .09. So that's really the future for a really dramatic reduction in solar heat gain.

But there are also questions about historic structures not being able to use vinyl windows. And we know in a lotta cases they don't even wanna use any new windows. In that case, a good solution would be an interior low-e storm window. So they still maintain aesthetics from the exterior of the building, but yet you can get significant improvement in energy performance with that interior storm window. There some new manufacturers that will make a window that will look historic, which may be an acceptable thing. But, obviously, this program can't address all of the applications for windows. We're trying to go after the mainstream market, stimulate the market to get more companies offering triple-pane windows, get large-volume buyers to buy them so that we can reduce the risk to the manufacturers. And then through all of this, move the whole market forward to try to get the higher levels of – for voluntarily programs.

So I don't know. Does anybody else have any questions that they – I know we all received many, many questions, more than we can answer in this timeframe. But if there's anybody else that has an important question that they'd like to respond to, I'll just open it up to any of the speakers.

Jason Bogovich:
Yeah, there's one question that came in. It says, "Do you see DOE supporting the use of these windows for the weatherization programs?" that's one that we would absolutely love to see is for weatherization programs to adopt the use. But it all depends – go ahead, Marc.

Marc LaFrance:
Yeah. I was just gonna say, just so everybody knows, historically, there's been some concerns about windows being promoted through the weatherization program because in lots of – in many, many applications in the past, windows were just not cost effective, okay? If you tried to put in a double-pane low-e from an existing condition, the things aren't as great. And so with lower prices, you can actually have some very cost-effective applications. So if it is cost-effect, and if it's greater than an SAR of one, then it should be viable option to retrofit weatherization, especially when we have a higher threshold now that we can spend on measures to weatherize homes. So it makes it another viable option.

And I know there was a question about public housing. I would say that we know that public housing pretty much has to be addressed at the local level. It's really hard to get it from a national level. And so if anybody out there is aware of a public housing entity predominantly in a colder climate that is very eager to work with us, then we'd be more than glad to help, whether it's a demonstration or whether it's helping do some analysis for them. But we really would like to see some nice case studies for weatherization where they go in and they retrofit all of the windows and they could really show the economics behind that.

I don't think there is a widespread study that's been done for full-scale window replacement, and we would like to do that.

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Graham Parker:
I think there are a couple questions that Terry can answer.

Terry Mapes:
Yeah. Just a couple real quick answers here. One was, "What are the earliest dates the windows will be available for purchase?" They've been available for about four weeks now. So you can go to the Web site right now as we speak and begin purchasing windows if you want.

And the other question is, "How successful is the volume program for windows manufacturers at this point?" We are asking the vendors to give us monthly sales reports. We are considering June the first full month, so we've not asked them to give us a report until roughly mid-July. That's the soonest we're gonna have any idea of what kind of sales have been going on out there. And I have a feeling it will take probably maybe a month or two for this to really pick up steam. So we may not have a real good idea of how successful it's been until probably late summer or so.

Marc LaFrance:
Also, wasn't there a question about the Round 2? Terry, do you wanna address the Round 2 timeframe and how people can participate in the process moving forward?

Terry Mapes:
I actually answered that question already.

Marc LaFrance:
Oh, you did? Okay. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. [Laughs] I'm sorry about that. Okay.

Terry Mapes:
That's all right.

Jason Bogovich:
Yeah, this is the question that came in. It says, "Who should be contact about potentially partnering with DOE as program and hosting a workshop?" Please contact. This is Jason Bogovich. Just send me an e-mail and we can touch base.

Male:
Okay.

Operator:
Yep. Well, that was great. Thank you everybody. Anthony, did you want to jump back in?

Anthoney Perkins:
Yeah, sure. We're done with the questions. Okay. We'd like to thank all of our speakers today for the time they've taken to be here. I would also like to thank all of you that are participating out there.

Please remember to visit the BTP Webinar page.

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