Hi,
I am working on a LEED Healthcare project. The hospital building is phase 1 of a number of phases within a large master plan area. The Central Utility Plant will supply energy to the entire master plan area and is located in a separate building, adjacent the hospital. The CUP is currently excluded from our LEED boundary.
Is it required that we follow the guidance in the USGBC Document: Treatment of District or Campus Thermal Energy in LEED V2 and LEED 2009 – Design & Construction (Aug 13,2010)?
If we follow this guidance, does the CUP need to be modeled? Does commissioning of the CUP have to be carried out?
Alternatively, is it possible not to follow this guidance and treat the CUP as a DES?
Many thanks in advance for your help.
Marcus Sheffer
LEED Fellow7group / Energy Opportunities
LEEDuser Expert
5912 thumbs up
December 17, 2012 - 9:25 am
You are not required to use it.
The CUP's performance would need to be simulated if you follow Option 2 in the DES. Does not mean you need to model the whole CUP.
It does not have to be commissioned for EAp1. There is guidance in the DES document regarding the Enhanced Commissioning credit on page 8.
The CUP sounds like a DES, suggest you read the definition on page 6.
Irina Foster
AECOM MEDecember 24, 2012 - 7:11 am
Marcus, thank you very much for the clarification.
Merry Christmas!
Irina
Susan Walter
HDRLEEDuser Expert
1296 thumbs up
December 24, 2012 - 1:53 pm
I am agreeing with Marcus. The CUP does sound like a DES situation but only if you are not building that CUP as part of the project and it does not read like you are.
Food for thought; you may want to do some commissioning in the CUP anyways. Hospital systems are complex and if the size of your project is any indication, likely to be pretty old as well as inadequate. The systems there may need a higher degree of technical introspection. If your owner is looking for operation efficiency and controls and they are not present in the CUP, you'll need to start discussing the situation with them. One of our clients has a late 1960's era CUP at their hospital and it took me 5 years of discussing different metering, monitors, controls and cost savings strategies before they finally said OK. They went from not demanding meters to demanding it for all their projects.