We have a project that consists of two connected buildings: an admin building and a factory building. The total area for the buildings is greater than 150,000 sq ft, therefore system 8 applies to the baseline case model. Unfortunately, our proposed system uses air cooled chillers and we are having a hard time achieving the required savings.
According to the USGBC, projects outside the U.S. may use an alternative standard to ANSI/ASHRAE/IESNA Standard 90.1-2007 if it is approved by USGBC as an equivalent standard using the process located at www.usgbc.org/leedisglobal.
The above link is broken, and we cannot find anything on the USGBC website that gives guidance on alternative standards to ASHRAE 90.1-2007. So my question is, are there any approved alternative standards to ASHRAE 90.1-2007 for international projects? Has anyone successfully submitted an energy model using a different standard? On another note, is it even possible to achieve the required savings, without using water-cooled chillers, if your baseline model uses system 8 - VAV with PFP Boxes?
Your feedback is greatly appreciated.
-Michael Aghabi
Francesco Passerini
engineer90 thumbs up
February 23, 2016 - 8:15 am
I am not aware of alternative standards.
Achieving the savings is possible. Consider that cooling is not the only end use.
Moreover, I think that the water cooled chillers of the baseline require an important amount of energy for pumping. What do people having more experience think about this point?
Regards
Marcus Sheffer
LEED Fellow7group / Energy Opportunities
LEEDuser Expert
5868 thumbs up
February 23, 2016 - 9:19 am
I do not recall an alternative baseline being approved yet. The process is pretty rigorous and requires some in depth modeling studies. It would be well beyond something an individual project team could attempt.
You will need to find the minimum savings elsewhere. Quite often manufacturing facilities will need to find energy savings within their process loads. There is an alternative compliance path for manufacturing facilities which can be found here.
http://www.usgbc.org/leed-interpretations?keys=10291
Santiago Rodriguez
Revitaliza Consultores65 thumbs up
March 3, 2016 - 2:21 pm
We also have had similar problems in projects in Mexico in some areas where water is scarce and has a high amount of minerals, so cooling towers are not installed in HVAC systems because of the high O&M costs. We then try to achieve energy savings in other areas such as fan power consumption, pumping energy and interior lighting. In hot climate areas it can be difficult to achieve the minimum energy savings treshold because cooling is one of the highest end uses, so if your project is still in the version 3 of LEED you can also try to recommend the client to install an on site renewable energy system to achieve the required energy savings. In version 4, however, renewable energy systems cannot be accounted for pre-requisite EAp2, which makes good sense.
Good luck!