LEED EBOM Case 2, Option 1

Good news Jennifer - the folks at Labs21 have produced a draft guidance document that I think you will find very helpful. I have actually applied their methodology on a number of labs and it seems quite sound. http://labs21benchmarking.lbl.gov/docs/Applying+Labs21+Benchmarking+for+LEED-EB+5-18-10+-+DRAFT.pdf Hope that helps

This is our first time to handle LEED-EB+OM, most of our projects are under LEED-NC, thus we don't understand the EA credit 1-Optimize Energy Efficiency. Here's my question: 1. Is Title-24 related to EAc1 from LEED-EB+OM requirements? If so, how can we apply this? 2. What is the baseline of 71% EPA Energy Star performance rating? 3. How can we increase the percentile to get higher points? 4. what is EPA's Energy Star's Portfolio Manager tool? Where can we access this? Appreciate any inputs/clarification on this requirements. Thanks, Susan

Thanks jennifer for taking time to respond. Here's my follow-up questions: 1. So, T-24 will not involve for EBOM projects? The type of our building is warehouse/museum for storage of collection cars, non-insulated, low efficient AC and half of the roof is already using PV system. 2. If i access the portfolio manager energy star, where should i start? 3. what kind of tool is that to increase builidng energy efficiency? Can we play around the data from this system to increase the points? Thanks in advance. Susan

Susan, my $0.02. 1. New building codes like T-24 don't really have any bearing on EBOM projects, since EBOM focuses on actual consumption as indicated on utility bills. They only relationship is that theoretically buildings designed to a stringent design code will perform better than national average, and therefore should theoretically fare well in benchmarking via Portfolio Manager (of course, this is not actually always true in reality). 2. If you are a first time user of Portfolio Manager, you might want to spend some time on the web site reading the how-to guides, review the Licenses Profession Guide to Energy Star (http://www.energystar.gov/ia/business/evaluate_performance/pm_lp_guide.pdf), or Google for free webinars on the benchmarking process. There's a lot of information out there to help novices. 3. If you are used to design modeling tools, the Energy Star approach is going to seem strange to you. It's not intended to identify the best opportunities for improvements in a specific building, but rather show how you are doing based on actual data. Once you enter the data, you will be able to see how close or far away to a target performance you are, and then would need to devise which strategies are most pertinent in your situation to make progress towards that target. An energy audit, commissioning, investigating utility rebates for upgrades, etc are typical next step. If you monkey with the data to artificially raise your score, the LEED reviewers will notice and it will cause you trouble.