EAp2

The project is a railcar vehicle maintenance facility (VMF) a couple acres large. This project falls under new construction and includes a new rail track to be brought into the VMF. I am unsure if the track is complete prior to the start of VMF or both at the same time. The project team is under the opinion that LEED is not obtainable. This opinion stems from the large amount of process loads (rail track power) used to move the rail cars within the building and believes these process loads shall be included within the energy model. In addition, the rail track power is used to power the building. However, the rail track power is tapped and stepped down to the VMF building through the use of a substation outside the project boundary. If the process load was included within the model, reducing energy use by 10% to meet the perquisite EAp1 would not be feasible. For example, let's pretend the client decided they wanted to cough up the dough for solar to power 25% of the building being a portion of the usual hvac, lighting and plug loads and tap into the track power for the remaining 75% building load. In my opinion, the energy model should reflect only those inputs noted above and any additional rail track power usage from moving the rail cars within the building shall be left out of the energy model. Perhaps an argument could be made that any track power related to moving rail cars is considered a constant necessity since its connected and ran off a source of power out of the project boundary, which is not affiliated with the building loads. If the LEED requires the process loads to be modeled its basically the same as requiring an indoor bus depot to reduce the power consumption required to run the bus engines.. Any insight, similar experiences or opinions you could shed on this would be much appreciated.