Calculating peak occupancy

Alexia Anastassiadis

LEEDuser Basic Member

5 thumbs up

April 5, 2013

We are working on a project with 4 different shifts. One regular 8 to 5 shift for office and morning afternoon and night shifts for factory workers, there no transients or visitors. At 3 pm morning shft finishes, afternoon shift starts and office workers are in the building. Is it correct that peak occupancy is the sum of all the people that are in the building at that time?

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Jean Marais

b.i.g. Bechtold DesignBuilder Expert

LEEDuser Basic Member

581 thumbs up

Fri, 04/05/2013 - 06:00

peak occupancy is the sum of all the people that are in the building at ANY ONE time...I usually break my occupancy down per hour...if there are any peaks and troughs within that hour, then this information is not captured. I think that is good enough. At what time interval does your "peak" occur?

Alexia Anastassiadis

LEEDuser Basic Member

5 thumbs up

Fri, 04/05/2013 - 14:03

Thank you, Jean! The maximum peak occurs at 3pm, when the morning shift ends, the afternoon shift starts and the central shift is at work, it happens once a day. How do you document the occupancy then? I´m doing a spreadsheet computing occupancy for each hour of the day. Is this correct?

Jean Marais

b.i.g. Bechtold DesignBuilder Expert

LEEDuser Basic Member

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Fri, 04/05/2013 - 14:39

That's pretty much what I do. As I do energy modeling, I do this per space type and sum the numbers for the facility. You may find usefull some default occupation schedules in ASHRAE 90.1 User's Guide Tables G-E to G-O for some common space types that may be used if there is no other information on the facility (these are load factors to be multiplied against the maximum loads...of occupants for example, i.e. against the max occupant density).