I am not sure how to approach a recent discovery. We had 12 months of metered energy data (electricity and gas) for our LEED EBOM registered office building, but we were way off the minimum efficiency performance for EAp2. Then, I found out that the office building's electricity meter - this building is located on a college campus- was erroneously including six streetlights (400W lamps each) located on a neighboring street that IS NOT a part of the project site. These lights automatically turn on at dusk 365 days of the year and were responsible for 50% of each months electricity use (by my estimates on average night time hours at this latitude)! Taking away the electricity consumed by the streetlights, the office building meets the pre-requisite plus earns EA points. My question is do I now have to wait an additional 12 months, after the college either installs a deduct meter on the streetlight breaker or separates them completely from my office building? It seems reasonable to me, since there is 3rd party data on the average night-time hours per month for the past year, that I could calculate the electricity consumed by the streetlights and subtract that from our monthly electric bills. Any opinions on an appropriate path forward?
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Ben Stanley
Senior Sustainability ManagerWSP - Built Ecology
LEEDuser Expert
250 thumbs up
March 30, 2012 - 11:28 am
I think that you really need to submit a project specific CIR for this situation. Because you would have to estimate the energy use from the street lights for the past 12 months, it would be best to get a blessing from GBCI upfront.