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  • Number 387  |
  • April 29, 2013

NREL engineer skis, hikes, and lives her passion for energy-efficient buildings

Sheila Hayter

Sheila Hayter.

Between dealing with a baby chick, a broken cello string and a colleague needing a ski lesson, Sheila Hayter still makes time to tackle projects for the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and ASHRAE, the worldwide organization for building engineers.

Hayter, 46, is a Senior Engineer and Group Manager for Opportunities, Evaluation, and Implementation in the Deployment and Market Transformation Department at DOE’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colo.

She’s the kind of person who, when asked if she has a philosophy of life, responds with a laugh, “Oh, I don’t have time for that.”

Still, she lives a philosophy of getting things done, of finding a balance between professional and personal, and of espousing her passion for energy efficiency in the buildings in which we live and work.

Ross D. Montgomery, an ASHRAE vice president (2010 – 2012), says of Hayter: “She has incredible vision for the future of our industry. She makes our work fun, exciting and interesting. She stays on the issues and is involved in the solutions. She is the agent of change and inspires young engineers to want to be a part of our industry.”

Few people have been more instrumental in helping establish stringent standards for energy-efficient buildings or for pushing architects, engineers, and developers to strive for 50% or more savings beyond the standards. For the past 21 years, Hayter has worked at NREL. For even longer than that, she has served her favorite professional organization, ASHRAE, which sets the standards for building safety, efficiency and quality. She currently chairs the Planning Committee of the 55,000-member organization.

On a recent Tuesday, though, her mind was on her three kids and domestic misadventures.

“One of our baby chicks died last night,” she said. “We have five – three adult hens and two babies. But I’ll need to buy another baby chick on my way home tonight, because the other baby needs a friend.”

All three of her kids ski, ride mountain bikes and play the piano, but each also has a specialty musical instrument. Megan, 13, plays the flute; Kian, 9, plays the violin. And Brennan, 12, plays the cello, but not when the A string snaps, as it did this morning. That’s one more errand for the way home.

“I’m overcommitted,” she said cheerfully. “That’s because I have a hard time saying no when something sounds fun – both in my work and my personal life. But I do try hard to stay somewhat balanced between what I do here, and doing other things that keep my life interesting.”

Hayter grew up in Manhattan, Kans., where her father was a mechanical engineer – both in the private sector, and as a professor at Kansas State University.

She surprised the family at 13 by earning enough babysitting and lawn-work money to take a school trip to Steamboat Springs – the first member of her family to go skiing. Thirty years later, her entire extended family skis, and for most of the past several years she has been a weekend ski instructor at Copper Mountain in the Colorado high country.

Asked what got her interested in math, science and engineering, she said: “I remember my dad helping me with math, and I’m in tears because it doesn’t make any sense to me, and I asked him why I even have to take math. He says, ‘You have to learn it because when you take Thermodynamics you’ll have to know it.’

“So, I thought everyone had to take math for when they take Thermodynamics,” she said. “It wasn’t until college that I realized that you only have to take Thermodynamics if you’re in engineering – and then only if you are in mechanical or a couple other specialties in engineering.”

By that time, she was hooked.

She joined one of the first student branches of ASHRAE and was in charge of bringing professional engineers to the university for talks. “That really helped me see the difference between engineering in an academic setting and the challenges facing engineers in real life,” she said.

As a mechanical engineering major, Hayter was of the gender that was outnumbered about 20:1. “Most of my professors were very supportive, but there was this one guy. I went to his office and asked him a question about a problem I couldn’t figure out.  He said, ‘Well girls can’t do math. My daughters can’t do math either.’ He was just so dismissive. It was like he was saying, ‘just go away. I can’t answer your question.’”

Hayter ended up getting an A in the class, partly, she says, to spite him.

Hayter has published 50 documents and papers during her time at NREL, including “Handbook for Planning and Conducting Charrettes for High-Performance Projects,” considered the “go-to” document for conducting design charrettes for energy-efficient buildings that are seeking LEED certification.

Hayter also was on the original planning committee that conceptualized the international Solar Decathlon.

She established and coordinates the efforts within the federal government to build energy-efficient buildings. As an NREL engineer she pushed the envelope, incorporating renewable energy into buildings. And she helped building engineers across the globe to think about the building as a whole, how energy-efficiency fits in with design and aesthetics.

She chaired the committee that developed the original charter for ASHRAE’s Advanced Energy Design Guidelines – those that specified getting to 30% or 50% greater efficiency than the baseline building, and those that can get a building to net-zero.

Hayter also is a distinguished lecturer for ASHRAE. Typical of her schedule in a 12-month period: Four cities in India,  five cities in Canada, two in Georgia;  presentations in Salt Lake City, Anchorage, Billings, Wichita, and Manhattan, Kans.  Previous speaking engagement have taken her to Greece, Italy, Hong Kong, and the Philippines in addition to cities in the U.S. and Canada.

Hayter’s envelope-pushing has produced real, replicable results. For example, the U.S. Energy Policy Act mandates that federal buildings improve their efficiency based on percentage improvements to ASHRAE standards. That’s the whole building, from saving energy to improving air quality and making the climate more comfortable – all stemming from the push by ASHRAE and DOE for more stringent standards and a holistic approach to buildings.

“There is this triangle where everybody is influencing everybody – DOE, NREL, and the professional organization, ASHRAE,” Hayter said. “Our success in increasing energy standards for buildings couldn’t have happened without the organizations working with each other.

“I’m a believer,” she added. “I think the ASHRAE standards are making a big difference. The standards are being incorporated in buildings all around the world.”

Until then, there’s more committees to chair and more energy-efficient standards to toughen, not to mention the family trip to Fruita, Colo., for mountain biking, the raft trip down the Colorado River, and the  new A string for the cello. And for goodness sake, don’t forget the baby chick.

Submitted by DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory