Electric Rates

Laura Long

Sr. Designer, Sustainability and Sr. Associate

NORR

LEEDuser Premium Member

22 thumbs up

March 17, 2011

The electric company for our school project offers a rate structure which includes a lower rate for heat pumps. About 2/3 of the building will be served by heat pumps, so we would like to take advantage of this. The rate only applys to the heat pumps themselves, they need to be metered separately. We would like to include this in our energy model, because it provides more advantage over the baseline, which is packaged VAV with hot water reheat. Our concern is the PRM guidelines say the same rates need to be used for the baseline and proposed buildings. Has anyone had experience with a similar rate structure?

Post a reply

Marcus Sheffer

LEED Fellow

7group / Energy Opportunities

LEEDuser Expert

4454 thumbs up

Thu, 03/17/2011 - 20:47

The rate must be the same in both models but you can model the incentive rate in both models which is typically done for off-peak incentives. For the rate you describe this may not show much savings. I would attempt to submit it as an exceptional calculation. Do two proposed building runs, one with and one without the incentive rate. The difference is attributable to the rate and you could argue that the savings are legitimate. Weak link in your argument will be the longevity of the rate's availability.