We're working on a 35,000 SF lab building on a campus district cooling loop. The baseline system type is #5, so there's no chilled water in the baseline. The project overcoming the process heat from the lab equipment using the district loop's chilled water (similar to using a separate process chiller).
The question is: Will LEED accept a model that uses System Type #5's airside equipment to cool the process load in the baseline, and then uses the district chilled water to cool the process load in the proposed?
Fundamentally, choosing to cool the process load with chilled water is an energy efficiency measure that should get credit for the energy savings. However, with our default typically being to make process loads equal between the baseline and proposed, there's been some conversation around if we need to model a chiller in both the baseline and the proposed for this case. Does anyone have experience with this situation and can offer feedback?
