eQuest $$ Reports and LEED

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I know that the BEPS and BEPU .sim file reports will give me consumption
data, but is there a standardized report, or even a way to create a
customized report that will make eQuest output a simulation into a
format similar to Tables 5 or 6 in the EAc1 section of LEED-NC, with
respect to cost values? This particular project I am having issues with
is using an On-Peak/Off-Peak rate structure, so I cannot simply multiply
the consumption data by a fixed utility rate. Am I missing a report
that already exists with this information? Thanks for the help.

Josh Greenfield, PE, LEED AP


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ES-D and ES-E

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Karen

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Karen...thanks for the response...ES-D and ES-E are still overall costs
and do not break the costs out into sub-categories (lights, task lights,
space cooling, etc.) like BEPS and BEPU do...do you know of any reports
that do a sub-categorized cost break-out?

Josh Greenfield, PE, LEED AP


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I am unsure how you could determine whether Electric Demand was
attributable to the lights, equipment, space cooling, etc for every
given hour. That seems too microscopic. I would suggest taking the
average cost for each month (so you you would catch the Summer-Winter
aspect), then subdividing your electric usage by this monthly (average
cost).

You could also call out hourly bins for each month to determine electric
usage ON/MID/OFF peak times and the costs associated with each bin. You
could also call out the individual electric use by category during that
time and determine what each category is using for that bin.

But does the USGBC REALLY require such Herculean data massaging?

John R. Aulbach, PE, CEM

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I think you need to combine PS-E for the end-use breakdown by time-of-use blocks, with the ES-F which will give you average rates for each block.

I'm not sure how this would work if you also had a mid-peak period, PS-E may only report a peak and non-peak breakdown. If you have that, hopefully you can lump them together on the LEED forms.

David

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EAc1 submittal tables, including 5 & 6, in the LEED-NC 2.2 Reference Guide are obsolete. I suggest looking at the current template samples on the USGBC website. They no longer have costs by end use.

I am not aware of a detailed convention to divide out energy costs from a complex utility rate across end uses. I suggest winging it and then massaging it so it does not send the wrong message, like showing a client cost savings on a fuel stream that has no energy savings.

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I forgot about that 25% presumption. The template has a check but of course the calculation is hidden.

I would want to assume it is simply prorating the cost by consumption for each fuel stream, summing all process costs, and then dividing by sum of all the fuel costs.

But in playing with it, I have convinced myself that the template calculation is flawed by ignoring some fuel streams in some instances.
Specifically I suspect it is ignoring fuel streams that have no process energy component but I am not going try to debug a formula I cannot see.

If you or anyone else can verify some funny behavior or just an inability to duplicate their calc, please let me know and we can write the USGBC. If it is under flagging projects, the right thing to do is to draw it to their attention.

Paul Riemer

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All,

We are working on an eQuest model for a high rise residential building
(part of a campus hot water loop) that uses a solar thermal system for
both space heating and domestic hot water . The proposed space heating
system is baseboard radiant heating.

So far our approach to modeling this is to change the inlet water
temperature to the water heater to match the supply temperature coming
out of the solar system. That only addresses the domestic hot water,
not the space heating. We can't find the way to change the inlet
temperature to the baseboard system, but we believe that there's
probably a way of doing it.

Does anyone have any advice on how to accomplish this? Any tips on
modeling solar thermal in eQuest (or otherwise) are welcome and greatly
appreciated!

Thanks in advance!

Best Regards,

Douglas Kot, AIA

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Can't do solar hot water in eQuest. Bummer !!

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no, but you can change the temperature of the hot water loop in the detailed
edit mode. I have done this to simulate low temperature water systems and
then used another program (such as RetScreen) to evaluate solar hot water
output. Unfortunately, I know of no way to directly integrate the two. The
problem arises that often when the sun is shining enough to produce heat
through the SHW system, the building does not need much heat. A thermal
storage tank can help mitigate this issue, but brings its own challenges.

I am surprised, however to learn that baseboard heat will be the method of
delivery. I am familiar with using SHW to supplement radiant panels, and
low-temperature water coils, but not baseboards.

Good luck!

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Karen

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I agree with Karen---you will need to change the temperature of the HW
loop. however, you may need two seperate HW loops if they require different
temperatures. there are two different ways you can go about modeling the
SHW system. Either your SHW meets all the HW load, in which case you can
model a dummy boiler, that generates HW but does not use any energy. or you
can use retscreen to figure out how much energy the SHW system will save on
heating and then subtract that out from your results.

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steve

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