Dear all,
we are planning a new office building direct near the production hall of the same owner. Only office building will be certified.
The office building will use the waste heat from the production process as the heating energy in winter (through a circulating heat exchanger).
Our idea is to model the proposed and baseline building both with the purchased heat and then zero out the heating cost in proposed building base on the free waste heat.
Is it accept that we assign the free waste heat also to a “renewable energy source” considering the Credit EAc5?
Thank you very much in advance for the help.
Best regards,
Qian
Marcus Sheffer
LEED Fellow7group / Energy Opportunities
LEEDuser Expert
5915 thumbs up
July 12, 2018 - 11:28 am
It is not a renewable energy source. If you have any follow up questions please post them in the EAp2 forum since this is not a question regarding renewable energy.
The question is how to account for the cost issue. If the proposed heating fuel cost is free then what is the baseline fuel cost? In reality there is a cost associated with the waste heat since there is an energy source that is used to produce it. This is complicated by the fact that the waste heat is off-site and so the energy source that is used to produce the waste heat is not captured within the models.
This issue does not appear to be adequately addressed within any of the documents that might apply. Appendix G and the DES guidance both basically say that the rate must be the same in both models, so if it is free in the proposed it would be free in the baseline.
I think you have two options - you can submit a LEED Interpretation or you can submit it as you think it should be addressed and see what the reviewer says. Obviously the Interpretation will provide you will so guidance ahead of your submission so it entails less risk. If you decide to submit it I would suggest that you provide a very thorough explanation of the situation including justification for the rate you use in the baseline. We can think of two possible baselines - 1) use the fuel source from the most likely system that the project would have installed if the waste heat was not available, or 2) use the fuel source that runs the process that produces the waste heat. The conservative approach would be the one which has the lowest cost.
Let us know how you make out if you take either of these two routes.
We will also submit this question for the next LEED Technical Reviewer call but that will not be until next month.
Qian Tang
July 16, 2018 - 3:31 am
Hi Marcus,
Thank you so much for the detailed explanations.
Actually we’ve once considered to conduct the energy modelling considering the DES Approach. But there are still problems about “source”: the campus (production & office etc.) of the project’s owner are serviced by the district heating energy and steam from the provider, who supplies the entire industrial park (incl. several campus of different company). This is an overall energy net and integrated balance, the waste heat (e.g. steam) from some production campus will be rewon and re-delivered to another production campus, which need the waste steam.
Our production building and process use the waste steam from the other companies on the industrial park, and our office building uses the waste heat from our own production process.
It is so difficult to use the DES approach because of above-named issues. This is a campus on campus, and waste heat in waste heat, and there are amount of upstream and downstream.
Since our project is still in the pre-design phase und has not been registered yet, we can’t submit a LEED Interpretation. We’ll keep the update and share it in the EAp2 Forum as soon as we have reached the LEED Interpretation and received the rulings.
Thanks again. And also looking forward to your updates after the LEED Technical Reviewer call.
Best regards,
David Eldridge
Energy Efficiency NinjaGrumman/Butkus Associates
68 thumbs up
July 16, 2018 - 3:17 pm
First you should take this conversation to the EAP2 page in case someone that monitors that section has some feedback, who may not be monitoring this section for EAC5.
But if you are confident that the building will meet the prerequisites regardless of how the district energy situation turns out then charge ahead. If that's a critical piece of meeting EAP2, then I think you should register now so that you have ability to submit a specific interpretation before you spend a lot of time and money on the other tasks.
Which country is the project located?
Marcus Sheffer
LEED Fellow7group / Energy Opportunities
LEEDuser Expert
5915 thumbs up
August 10, 2018 - 12:35 pm
This issue was discussed with GBCI technical reviewers recently. I will include a post in the EAp2 forum that addresses this issue of off-site waste heat.