My team is designing a Central Utility Plant building that will house a DES which will serve several campus buildings thermal energy demand. We are going after certification for the building itself, not the buildings served by the DES, however the buildings served by the DES may pursue certification separately. I have a few questions as to how this is approached.
- Confirm that the energy use of the DES should be excluded from the energy model of the building since it is essentially energy that is being exported from the building rather than energy used by the building.
- Should the heat gain from the DES equipment housed in the building and the energy use for the HVAC equipment that conditions those spaces within the building be included in the energy model, or would this be considered parasitic energy that is part of the DES equipment for which any other LEED project connected to the DES would include in it's virtual efficiency of the DES? Same question for the lighting energy?
- If the energy use in item 2 is to be included in the energy model, then since the purpose of the space conditioning is to support the DES rather than provide space amenity, could the energy used for space conditioning be considered process energy? Same question for lighting energy?
- The building will be fit out and there won't be any shell space in the design, but I'm being told by members of the design team that since the building is a central utility plant that we can register the project as Core and Shell rather than NC, however, I don't see any guidance that supports this. Are there special circumstances or precedents for a central utility plant building that would allow this? Perhaps they are thinking that we can apply the CS thresholds for energy performance if the unregulated energy exceeds 50% of the total.