Rounding of Percent Energy Cost Savings for EAc1 Points

LEED online should be able to calculate the savings rounded to .1%. However, its very likely the reviews will drop your savings so you end up being one threshold lower. I suggest you tweak some schedules (such as lighting) to get more savings so you have some buffers for review comments

No rounding up is allowed.

I would suggest that tweaking schedules for the sole purpose of increasing your savings is not an ethical practice. In the grand scheme of things certainly a minor ethical violation but IMO it a violation of the ethical standards that modelers should uphold. I certainly understand that the "tweak" is well within the potential margin of error and that modeling is generally not conducted with a high degree of precision but you have to draw ethical boundaries somewhere.

For the rounding I remembered it wrong, LEED will calculate up to 0.01% so for your case you cant round it. If you have 31.995% then LEED will calculate it as 40.00%
For the tweak, I would say the schedule itself is simply an estimation. So I believe this is not even close to a ethical problem. It is a ethical problem if you know the exact schedule but choose to use a different one, such as ventilation schedule. For lighting schedule, if you can estimate 50 hours/week, you can also estimate 55 hours/week as long as they can represent how the building operates.

There is a similar questions I asked few months back here, it has more comments.
http://www.leeduser.com/comment/redirect/56343

You caught me inside my own ethical dilemma. Apparently I did suggest a tweak for the purpose of increasing the savings. I think it is a question of what is allowed versus what is right. The tweak is certainly allowed but is it ethical? This could certainly vary depending on the specific tweak and the source of the information used to create the modeling input.

I think we should always model the input parameters as accurately as we can with the information we have. If the lighting is projected by the owner to operate 50 hours a week, then that is what we should model. How did you obtain the information used to produce the lighting schedule? If the source was known I consider it unethical to add 5 hours for the sole purpose of increasing your savings. For me this is clearly unethical since you are changing a modeling input you know is less than accurate in order to garner greater savings. Just because we can, does not mean we should.

Perhaps the issue here is more related to the accuracy and source of the input data used in the models. We try to be as accurate as possible and obtain the input data with significant input from the owner and design team. In our process there would be no ambiguity about whether the lighting schedule would be for 50 or 55 hours.

There certainly may be other tweaks one could consider making that would not present the same sort of ethical dilemma.

I agree with you that if we know the exact schedule we shouldn't change it as I also mentioned it in my previous post. But if the schedules are based on estimation, IMO they can be changed as long as it represent the building operation. The owners usually give the building operation schedule, but there is always difference between building operation schedule and lighting schedule since there are always people like us who work overtimes and thus keep the light on. For residential project, the schedule can vary even more since lighting are controlled by occupants. And I use lighting simply because it is first thing came into my mind, there definitely are other things that can be better examples

Sorry to hijack your post for our discussion of ethics.

Unless you can point to an error made by the reviewer you will need to appeal. If you feel the reviewer was in error you can submit an inquiry via the GBCI Contact Us on their web site.

Marcus-

Joseph said this was the final design review, not the final construction review. Couldn't Joseph go back through the model to make sure he didn't miss any potential small savings by not choosing to model it (something like shading, for example) and resubmit a revised energy model with the construction review if he finds something that pushes the savings up above 32%? Or if that's not acceptable, I suppose there is a remote possibility that something changed in the positive direction between design and construction. Would that be a reason to resubmit the energy credit during construction?

Thanks,
Julia

You are not supposed to submit the model for a third review unless something changed in construction and you are only allowed to make those changes. If that is the case then you can submit for a third review but you should not be changing anything else in the model unless you note the change and indicate that it was originally modeled in error. You can't submit the model for a third review to correct any modeling errors or to model an omission.

But you could go back to the project team, suggest some additional energy efficiency measures, implement those measures, and resubmit the model for the improved building.