Hi all,
we are working on a LEED EBOM project for a university building near Helsinki, Finland.
At the moment we are struggling to fulfill the requirements of EAp2. After entering all data into the Portfolio Manager it became clear that our performance is not good enough to meet the prerequisite (weather normalized source EUI of 145.0).
After talking to a staff member of Energy Star and after reading through documents on the methodology of Portfolio Manager we are quite confused. EAp2 requires comparing the energy performance to the national average whereas Portfolio Manager compares it to U.S. buildings. So what sense does that make for international facilities? The CBECS which is the basis for mostly all benchmarks in Portfolio Manager didn’t include any international facilities and as the staff member of Energy Star explained our project building is compared to U.S. buildings of that type and how they would operate under Finnish weather conditions.
Did anyone of you have similar problems? Or did anyone use a local benchmark instead of Portfolio Manager?
P.S. our project building is only 2 years old, no energy-intensive spaces, all computers are Energy-Star labeled and by comparing our energy consumption to 4 other universities in Finland, our performance was in all cases better.
I’m grateful for any hints or tips.
Best,
Stefanie
Tristan Roberts
RepresentativeVermont House of Representatives
LEEDuser Expert
11478 thumbs up
March 21, 2013 - 3:07 pm
Stefanie, could you please post this question to our EAp2 forum? Thanks.
Stefanie Hoffmann
HAAGA HELIA OY Ab6 thumbs up
March 25, 2013 - 10:23 am
Hi Tristan,
I did post it to the EAp2 forum already and talked about it with a couple of people. But it wasn't helpful because no one had experience with international projects so I thought I'll try it again here.
JOHN BURNETT
FAC-LEEDership19 thumbs up
March 31, 2013 - 7:13 am
Stefanie.
We recently completed certification for LEED EBOM large banking & finance office building in Hong Kong, using Energy Star. This is possible because ES has the weather file data for Hong Kong. Our project include small data centers so is relatively energy intensive, yet with the right building data, including number of PCs, the ES score was reasonable.
My understanding is that ES compares with comparable CBECs buildings, defined by type and size, rather than across the whole range.
If no weather file for your project's location, try a similar US location. This will give you an indication of EUI and EAp2 compliance.
Stefanie Hoffmann
HAAGA HELIA OY Ab6 thumbs up
April 2, 2013 - 9:26 am
Hi John,
thank you for your reply!
There is weather data available for Helsinki but when I compare average monthly temperature data to our project location it sometimes differs up to 10 degrees (Celcius). Also average rainfall differs. Does that count already as "similar weather data"?
If not how would I find a U.S. location with more similar climate?
Jean Marais
b.i.g. Bechtold DesignBuilder Expert832 thumbs up
April 2, 2013 - 10:56 am
how much historical data are you looking at for your average? weather can vary drastically from year to year. CDD and HDD can vary up to 40% from one year to the next. This is the point of TRY weather data. It is not actual weather data AMY. The available set of international TRY weather data from ASHRAE is usually good enough. if you need more info or explanation in this regard, contact the folks at whitebox technologies or weather analytics.
Stefanie Hoffmann
HAAGA HELIA OY Ab6 thumbs up
April 30, 2013 - 2:57 am
Hi Jean,
sorry for the late reply. I just checked the internet for weather data so this was probably not that reliable. In the meantime we also dropped the project since we don't meet EAp2 and the weather data was my last attempt to find a reason for our high energy consumption figures.
But thank you for your info anyways!