The building we’re for which considering M&V will have 14 submetered apartments (which includes the condensing unit for each), as well as a house meter, for electricity (gas will be on one main meter). There is no BMS. Do we need to break down the electric usage further—differentiating between cooling, heating, lighting, plug load, appliances, etc.—or is it sufficient to have total numbers? Because there’s no BMS and the building won’t pay to install meters on each condensing unit, there’s really no way to break down the utility usage further than electric/gas, by month and by apartment. Thoughts?
You rely on LEEDuser. Can we rely on you?
LEEDuser is supported by our premium members, not by advertisers.
Go premium for
Marcus Sheffer
LEED Fellow7group / Energy Opportunities
LEEDuser Expert
5922 thumbs up
November 3, 2015 - 3:36 pm
No a BMS is not necessary.
You need to gather data in the building that will enable you to calibrate the energy model. So what data would you need? I would suggest that apartment electricity and whole building natural gas is no where close to what you would need to calibrate an energy model. How else could you get this data? You do not have to install permanent meters. You can use spot measurements and short term trending devices to gather data by hand. For a small library without BMS that is what we did. You might be able to figure out a sampling protocol so you would not need to break down the energy use in each apartment. Many ways to gather data. Find the one that makes the most sense for your project.