Existing energy expertise for the design of commercial buildings could go largely unused because it is not available in a manageable form to building designers and owners. This report proposes making this expertise available to designers of commercial buildings as an energy component of the design tools that will be available in the 1990s. The energy component would be developed with Department of Energy funding and would be integrated with commercial design tools. The energy component would make it simpler to consider energy alternatives as the building is being designed. The report surveys this subject area, analyses potential applications for such tools, describes and analyses concepts and models of the energy component, and provides a phased feasibility plan for research and development work on the energy design component • i i i • He next selects the energy characterization mode, which can supply information on energy patterns for a typical office building of this configuration in the Sacramento region. The program automatically calculates expected energy and demand costs based on the local utility rates. It then describes the energy flows within the building in charts that depict lighting and HVAC system v oped software for use in the design of buildings. The result would be an integrated software package to aid the designer in the building design process and to provide expert insight into the energy related implications of a proposed design. The preface presents a scenario showing how the proposed software tool could work. Without such an effort, available energy expertise, which could presently result in significant long-term savings nationwide, will go largely unused by designers and owners who have shorter-term goals to meet and little time or incentive to become energy experts.
The proposed “Energy Conservation Standards for New Federal Residential Buildings” are embodied in an interactive computer program which analyzes over 400 Energy Conservation Options (ECOs) for 9 housing types and 5 fuels across 1000 U.S. climate zones. The program uses Life-Cycle Cost (LCC) economic analyses in a two-step procedure to derive a result close to the “economic optimum”: (1) an initial Savings-to-Investment Ratio (SIR) ranking, followed by (2) a series of Net Benefit (NB) iterations. Consideration is given to the interaction between the set of envelope and the set of mechanical equipment ECOs.
The distinctive.feature of the LCC algorithm is that it simultaneously evaluates these two sets of ECO types, and in doing so it keeps active the entire list of energy conservation measures through-out the NB calculations. Envelope ECOs found to be ineffective at a certain combination of heating/cooling mechanical equipment efficiencies are re-examined every time equipment efficiencies change. In a new context of efficiencies, these envelope ECOs may become cost-effective. Similarly, envelope ECOs which were before cost-effective may lose this status. The same process applies to the LCC evaluation of equipment ECOs within a changing loads context.
Pacific Northwest Laboratory Operated for the U.S. Department of Energy by Battelle Memorial Institute c) Batelle DISCLAIMER This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government. Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof, nor any of their employees, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privatelyowned rights.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.