Does anyone have experience documenting the rated power of a gas appliance? Are we to only document the electricity usage of gas appliances, or do we account for the gas usage? The power data that I'm getting from the manufacturer for a gas oven is in BTU's and is a rather high number representing the gas load of the oven. I'm wondering if I am supposed to calculate what an equivalent value would be in watts, or if perhaps only the electricity usage of the oven is supposed to be included in the rated power spreadsheet? Thanks.
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Dan LeBlanc
Senior Sustainability ManagerYR&G
86 thumbs up
July 10, 2012 - 1:36 pm
Only electric appliances are included in the Energy Star calculations.
Dana Villeneuve
Sustainable Building Services Project ManagerArchitectural Energy Corporation
12 thumbs up
July 10, 2012 - 3:50 pm
Thanks Dan. That's a bummer to hear, as the Commercial Fryers Energy Star standard includes efficiency criteria for gas fryers, and the list of qualified products includes a number of gas fryers. We were hoping we could include ours in the credit form list to bump up our overall EAc1.4 percentage. I'll update the comment thread if I happen to learn anything more during our project's GBCI Review. Thanks again!
Rosa Cheney
Rosa D Cheney AIA, PLLCJanuary 27, 2014 - 1:37 pm
I had this same question, and thought it important to close the loop on this forum thread so it's not hanging out there with old information. Anyhow, the USGBC issued an addendum to the 2009 LEED Reference Guide ID+C on Oct 12, 2012:
Page 181, under 6. Calculations, "Add the following sentence to the end of Step 2: For gas equipment, convert BTU/h to watts to compare power usage."
So gas equipment, if eligible for Energy Star, does need to be included and the energy use converted to watts.
Suzanne Painter-Supplee, LEED AP+ID&C
PrincipalSEESolutions LLC
126 thumbs up
January 28, 2014 - 1:17 pm
At www.fishnick.com, you can download the LEED Prescriptive Measures *.xlsx spreadsheet that lists both baseline & prescriptive limits for both gas & electric equipment, along with approving agencies, of which Energy Star & CEE are two. Gas food service equipment, in general, is rarely over 40-45% efficient for cooking equipment like ovens & ranges, yet electric is often 65-70+ for most cooking, best case, induction, and 90+ for ware washing tank & booster heat. So I'm confused as to why we'd calculate with btu to watts to measure when there is a substantial difference between that and the baseline for same oven, for instance, but in electric instead of gas. Example: A full size convection oven, baseline idle rate 2KW (@65% baseline efficiency) and full size gas, 18000 btu in idle, (30% baseline efficiency.) But converting btu to watts bumps the KW to 5.275KW, and is still more than 2, even factoring efficiencies. Fryers are an even bigger spread. Plus, you have substantially more energy usage with gas due to vastly different ventilation requirements. In the case of ranges,it's almost half. But that's another can of worms!