A small site has two office buildings, a storage building and parking lot. For this multiple building project (not campus) seeking LEED EB-O+M certification, energy usage data from each building must be entered in Portfolio Manager separately, and each building must meet EAp2 individually. So each building will be submetered, but what about the electricity for the storage building (and more importantly) for the parking lot headbolt heaters, which account for 6% of the site's total electrical consumption?
the headbolt heaters are submetered, but do I split up that energy data between the two buildings based on FTE? or square footage? or just split it evenly? Should headbolt heaters (needed to keep cars from freezing up in Fairbanks, AK) even be included in the building energy usage?
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Alexa Stone
ecoPreserve: Building Sustainability134 thumbs up
September 25, 2012 - 10:33 pm
The storage building is not pursuing certification and is attached from the building so it should not be part of the benchmark but you must decide whether or not it will be in the boundary. You should refer to the LEED MPRs for guidance on multiple buildings. As for the heaters, they do not serve the building function or mechanical systems so my suggestion is that they are not included. my suggestion is to stick to the guidance offered by Energy Star in bench marking these to buildings appropriately. Hope this helps!
Chris Miller
Chief Mechanical EngineerDesign Alaska
36 thumbs up
September 26, 2012 - 4:52 pm
Thank you, Jeff. For clarification: the storage building is not attached. Also, it is used in the summer as a materials testing lab (concrete and aggregate testing). The annual average FTE is 0.25, so it is ineligible for LEED certification, per MPR#5.
So, from my reading of MPR#3, it seems that the storage building can be treated "as an extension of the certifying building" (this is from the "NON-LEED CERTIFIABLE BUILDING ON SITE" paragraph on p.26 of the MPR Supplemental Guidance, Revison #2)
Can you please tell me if I am applying the MPR guidance correctly? I also now see that there is a 'parking lot' space type in PM, so I think I should include the headbolt heaters in that space type. Does that sound right?
Finally, somewhere in the MPR guidance, it mentions dividing up supporting land (parking, hardscape, etc.) proportionally if it is shared with another building. Using that logic, should I proportionally assign the electrical usage of the parking lot (headbolt heaters) to each building, according to the FTE breakdown?
Dan Ackerstein
PrincipalAckerstein Sustainability, LLC
LEEDuser Expert
819 thumbs up
September 26, 2012 - 4:59 pm
So I'll leave the MPR question to folks better qualified than myself to answer, but on the headbolt heater question I would agree that the energy used by those heaters should be included in your PM energy analysis just as you would parking lot lights. I have no idea how common or rare those are in Alaska, but theoretically PM Tool's climate normalization should be comparing your building to building's in a similar climate, and therefore dealing with a similar issue of getting cars to start.
That being said, Alaska is likely the extreme end of that climate zone and I'm not confident there would be many buildings in Fairbanks in the CBECS data set. So if your Energy Star Rating seemed off, I'd take a second look at it with the headbolt heaters pulled out and consider requesting an interpretation from GBCI if that situation seemed more accurate.
Tough one!
Hope that helps,
Dan
Chris Miller
Chief Mechanical EngineerDesign Alaska
36 thumbs up
September 26, 2012 - 9:20 pm
Thank you very much, Dan. I think you are exactly right about the climate zone and the lack of CBECS data sets - that's a typical problem with "national" standards and design principles applied to our climate. Since this will be the first EB-O+M project in the Alaskan Interior, the issue will likely be new to GBCI, as well. Since this question affects all EBOM projects in this region, do you think it would be a LEED Interpretation instead of a CIR? Thanks again, Dan.
By the way, vehicle "plug ins" are installed on every car in Alaska (and they usually improve vehicle emissions and reduce idle times).
Eric Anderson
Technical Customer Service SpecialistGBCI
170 thumbs up
September 27, 2012 - 3:11 pm
Unlike the rest of the MPRs, MPR 5 (re: min FTE) is not a make-it-or-break-it requirement for LEED eligibility, which often leads to confusion. If a building has less than 1 annualized FTE, it simply means that building is not eligible for any IEQ credit points, not that it is "non-LEED-certifiable". Usually, a building is only truly "non-LEED-certifiable" if it has less than 1,000 sf of gross floor area (and, thus, cannot meet MPR 4).
That said, in some cases there are structures that solely support the normal operations of the main LEED project building that also happen to contain 1,000 sf or more of gross floor area. In that case it is not always clear-cut whether these should be treated as separate buildings or extensions of the main project building. These are project-specific, special circumstances which are best addressed in advance of the certification review via the formal inquiry process (https://www.leedonline.com/irj/go/km/docs/documents/usgbc/leed/config/co...).
It would be the project team's option whether to submit these issues as CIRs or LIs. It seems like the topics could be framed in such a way as to have broad-enough applicability that they would be appropriate to either type of inquiry. USGBC will refund the LI portion of a formal inquiry fee if they deem the inquiry too project specific and, therefore, are unwilling to issue a public LI ruling on the matter. Please refer to the LI FAQ for more guidance (https://www.usgbc.org/ShowFile.aspx?DocumentID=8858).
Chris Miller
Chief Mechanical EngineerDesign Alaska
36 thumbs up
September 27, 2012 - 9:56 pm
Thanks for your attention, Eric. The ancillary building in question is less than 1,000 sf. Given that information, is my understanding correct that it is "non-LEED-certifiable"? Further, am I correct in understanding that this building can be treated "as an extension of the certifying building"? Finally - does this mean I should include its energy use (and square footage and PC) in Portfolio Manager? Thank you.