Residential Wood Heater In-Situ Testing Request for Information (RFI)

Description Wood is an important renewable source of fuel for residential heat, with 10% of American households (approximately 13 million) burning wood for heat and 2% using wood as their primary heat source. Although wood heaters provide a small percentage of energy used in residences in the United States, the devices are a substantial source of particulate matter emissions. These emissions contain fine particulate matter (PM) along with other pollutants, including carbon monoxide (CO), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), toxic air pollutants (e.g., benzene and formaldehyde), and black carbon. Improvements in the design and automation of wood heaters have the potential to significantly reduce emissions and increase efficiency. In addition to wood heater design, proper installation and operation also determine the level of emissions and efficiency of residential wood heaters. As innovation has driven the improved performance of residential wood stoves, they have become more efficient and cleaner burning, as proven by laboratory certification tests. Measuring stoves' performance as they burn in residences with real user behavior (in-situ) will give more insight into the stoves' efficiency as well as the indoor and outdoor air quality. Collecting in-situ data will provide both industry and government with information to guide further innovation of cleaner and more efficient wood stoves and the best use of renewable wood feedstocks. Background Since fiscal year 2019 the U. S. Department of Energy (DOE) Bioenergy Technologies Office (BETO), an element of DOE's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE), has been the steward of funds to support the development of cleaner burning, higher efficiency residential wood heaters. These funds have supported topics in Funding Opportunity Announcements (FOA), Wood Heater Design Challenge (WHDC) competition, a FY23 Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) call, and a series of workshops held in 2022. A recommendation from the March 2022 workshop series was to focus on the in-situ testing of wood heaters to better understand their actual performance as influenced by many factors, including but not limited to operator control, chimney design, climate, and wood quality. This RFI seeks further input from stakeholders to define the goals and objectives for a planned effort to collect in-situ wood heater performance data. Purpose The purpose of this RFI is to solicit feedback from industry, academia, research laboratories, government agencies, and other stakeholders on issues and considerations related to testing residential wood stoves in-situ to enable the development of cleaner, more efficient wood heaters. The planned in-situ field data collection effort will monitor wood heater performance in operation by the homeowner rather than an imposed duty cycle in a laboratory environment. EERE is specifically interested in input in identifying the most important parameters to measure, considerations of in-situ test design, data collection methods, operator behavior, and other input surrounding in-situ testing. This is solely a request for information and not a FOA. EERE is not accepting applications. Responses to this RFI must be submitted electronically to woodheat@ee.doe.gov no later than 5:00pm (ET) on September 30, 2024. Responses must be provided as attachments to an email. It is recommended that attachments with file sizes exceeding 25MB be compressed (i.e., zipped) to ensure message delivery. Responses must be provided as a Microsoft Word (.docx) attachment to the email, and no more than 5 pages in length, 12 point font, 1 inch margins. Only electronic responses will be accepted. Please see the full RFI document at EERE-Exchange.Energy.gov.