A Green Rooftop System for Commercial Buildings with Superior Energy Efficiency

This proposed Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) Phase II project is to develop, prototype and commercialize a Green Rooftop Technology with superior building energy efficiency to significantly reduce energy consumption of our nation’s industrial and commercial buildings. Besides, this proposed technology can significantly extend the lifespan of current building rooftop materials to reduce the maintenance costs for all industrial and commercial building owners and property managers. In some situations, this proposed rooftop system could have longer life than the buildings themselves, especially when the rooftop systems are installed some years after the buildings were built and put in use. In such situations, due to its completely modularized structure design, this proposed rooftop system could be disassembled into modules from an end-of-life building rooftop, and reassembled/reused in other buildings. Furthermore, this proposed technology uses totally recyclable materials. So, at the real end of its life, the entire building rooftop system can be disassembled into pieces and a hundred percent recycled. Nothing will go to landfill at the end. This is another major environmental benefit of this proposed system.Very importantly, the above-mentioned unparalleled benefits of this proposed technology do not come with high cost. In fact, its cost is lower than current green rooftop technologies in the sense that it can pay itself within two years due to its superior energy efficiency, and its low cost modularized structure design. Users of this technology, including builders, building owners and property managers, etc. will get the money, which they paid for this green rooftop system, back within two years from energy bill savings, maintenance cost reductions, rooftop material life extensions (resulting in lower re-roofing frequency), plus some electricity generation revenues at peak grid hours. In order to keep the system cost low, energy storage is not included. Extra electricity is uploaded to grid. The total domestic market size of this technology can be as large as $197 billion dollars each year, which is equivalent to 1642.3 kilo-watt-hours of electricity annually, on top of all the benefits such as reducing our nation's dependency on fossil fuels and cut down both criteria air pollutants and greenhouse gas emissions to protect our environment.