Dear all, Sorry in advance for this lengthy thread. In a current (European) project the certifying building will be supplied with district heat from a large city network. We use option 2 for modeling the district heat system according to the current DES Guidance. In summer the district heat will be used in an absorption chiller to cover the base cooling load. The absorption chiller will be installed inside the certifying building and designed and paid for by the building owner. In a CIR the GBCI reviewers noted that there must be a mechanical chiller in the baseline model instead of an absorption chiller: “Absorption chillers shall only be included in the Baseline Case model if the project team is using option 1 (building stand-alone mode).” We appealed that but the reviewers kept their view. They refer to two sections of the DES Guide: 1.) “Appendix E states that the Baseline Case should be compared against code-compliant on site equipment as described in Section 2.4” This seems to refer to the first numbered item starting “Model the district HEATING source…” option 2. This is about heating and not cooling, which we told the reviewers. 2.) “Table 4 (Page 12) indicates the energy sources that must be modeled for Option 2. For the baseline case, it indicates that an on-site cooling plant or packaged cooling must be modeled…” As far as we understand it this refers to district cooling only. Anyway there is not district cooling but only district heating. We are a bit lost on what to do. We still think that our approach of having absorption chillers in both baseline and proposed case is correct. Anyway, we don’t want to go through another appeal. Is there any way to escalate this issue to a higher level if we think the reviewers are wrong? Or does anybody have other hints or comments?
LEEDuser Basic Member
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