We are confused as to what "centrally monitored" means.
Does it mean that the building owner must install wiring infrastructure to monitor each tenant individually from a BMS or can the wiring be dipensed with entirely?
A simple subtration of base building consumption from the total building energy consumption gives you the total energy use of tenants.
Isnt submetered energy use of the core enough to calibrate the energy model?
Marcus Sheffer
LEED Fellow7group / Energy Opportunities
LEEDuser Expert
5909 thumbs up
September 23, 2013 - 3:25 pm
The purpose of this credit is to install the infrastructure needed to install individual meters for each tenant's space. If the tenants pay for their own energy use they tend to pay more attention to it.
Centrally monitored means that the metering data comes to a single location and can be read from that location. I suppose it could be a wireless system, sending a wireless signal from the sub-meter to the central monitor.
A subtraction as described will not enable individual tenants to be sub-metered. This credit does not require you to sub-meter by energy end use and calibrate the energy model, that is EAc5.1.
Rudolph Carneiro
HVAC consultantOptimized Systems
26 thumbs up
September 23, 2013 - 3:44 pm
Thanks marcus.
What is the purpose of measuring each tenant space in terms of corrective actions though? If the building maintenance staff cant do anything about it, why do they need to know about each tenant?
If a tenant has his own meter and a monthly bill from the power company, he should be able to reduce his own energy use if his bills get too high.
Installing wiring infrastructure or wireless comunication from each tenant space to a central monitoring station is exceptionally expensive in high-rise buildings.
Marcus Sheffer
LEED Fellow7group / Energy Opportunities
LEEDuser Expert
5909 thumbs up
September 23, 2013 - 5:12 pm
I agree that the corrective action related to energy savings part of the credit requirement language is confusing to me too. Perhaps the corrective action is intended to be taken at the tenant level but since there is no prediction of energy savings. Maybe this is explained in the Reference Guide.
I would think that if each tenant space could be separately metered by the power company for each fuel type then you could make the case that it would qualify. They certainly have the means for central monitoring! You would probably need to show that the electrical system in the facility has been designed to allow for such separate meters.
In my experience the utility will not install a whole bunch of meters serving individual spaces so the owner submeters the building but pays the utility for the whole thing.