We are working on a project with two buildings on one site, one commercial C&S, one Hotel. The two buildings are sharing some thermal plant, but it is only a condenser water loop – one central cooling tower set, one boiler plant to boost the loop. Both systems will be water source heat pumps, but separate submissions for LEED (and code).

I reviewed the "Treatment of District or Campus Thermal Energy in LEED" document to try to determine how I should submit my project, but it has made me more confused. The campus document talks about a DES as being a system that provides thermal energy “heating via hot water or steam, and/or cooling via chilled water”. Since this is neither, and following the Option 1 path will drive both baseline and proposed far from what is actually in the buildings, should we just ignore the central plant and treat them as separate water loops? There are theoretical energy savings from putting two buildings with different profiles on the one loop, and capacity reductions obviously, but using the guide doesn't seem any kind of logical.

I am leaning towards just giving each building a separate loop, but this won't match the drawings, I want to be sure that GBCI will actually accept the approach I take.

Thanks