Tania Ullah

Tania Ullah is a mechanical engineer in the Heat Transfer and Alternative Energy Systems Group of the Energy and Environment Division (EED) of the Engineering Laboratory (EL) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Tania Ullah joined the NIST Heat Transfer and Alternative Energy Systems group in September 2009 after completing her master's degree.

Ms. Ullah has been the Principle Investigator of the Energy Monitoring System for Net Zero Energy Residential Buildings project since 2010. This project is under the BED's Improved Building Energy Performance program and its aim is to address the issue of providing residential building occupants with enough information on their consumption to make critical energy savings decisions in the home. The World Business Council for Sustainable Development identified "Lack of awareness and information on energy consumption and cost" as one of three major barriers to energy efficient behavior and reports that "technical devices to measure energy consumption and provide immediate feedback can help households to cut energy consumption by as much as 20%." Ms. Ullah's role has been to develop the measurement science to provide real-time energy data for various end-uses within residential buildings, including optimization of sensing networks, analysis to identify end-uses that are the most sensitive contributors to total energy use in the home and determination of useful energy saving strategies for occupants.

Ms Ullah's work also entails contributing to the group's efforts in solar photovoltaics research, specifically evaluating the electrical and thermal performance of building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) panels and predicting their annual energy production, amongst other performance characteristics, using computer simulation models. This work will enable consumers to accurately assess the energy and cost savings for different PV technologies and system configurations.

In addition, Ms. Ullah has contributed to the development of testing methods for residential water heaters as a part of the DOE/NIST Appliance Program. Her work involves close collaboration with the members of ASHRAE Standards Producing Committee 118.2 to identify critical issues with current test methods and contributing and disseminating research results on the energy efficiency of various water heating technologies.