Hello all. I am looking for baseline information on commercial building energy use, construction and technologies for Alaska.
If you are aware of any such studies, I would be very grateful if you can tell me where to find them.
Thanks in advance for your assistance!
Regards,
Bob Ram?rez, P.E.
Bob,
This will not entirely cover what you want, but it may give you a good start. DOE has published benchmark energy models and results for 16 different types of commercial buildings in 16 ASHRAE 90.1-2004 climate zones here:
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/commercial_initiative/new_construction.html
If you prefer not to dive into the energy models themselves, you can get most of what you would need to know about them in the "scorecard" spreadsheets. Each scorecard lists the inputs and results for one particular building type across all the climate zones. Tip - to get the scorecard files, you will need to download the zip files by building type, not climate zone. It looks like Alaska has climate zones 7 and 8. Climate zone 7 was simulated using the TMY2 Duluth, MN weather file, and climate zone 8 was simulated using the TMY2 Fairbanks, AK weather file.
These are considered to be baseline/benchmark buildings representative of a particular commercial building type. They may help you by:
? Showing the difference in energy consumption in climates 7 and 8 versus the other climate zones - both total and broken down by end-use and fuel type
? Showing how the above changes depending on building type
? Showing the variation in auto-sized equipment between climate zones and building types
One big caveat - for a more apples-to-apples comparison, system types were not varied across climate zones according to local practices. If you want to know what system types are more common in Alaska vs. another region, these models will not provide you with that information. They are simulations intended to represent average (new construction) buildings, but not any one particular real building.
To get more of a statistical representation of what's out there, you might try the CBECS dataset:
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/cbecs/
Good luck!
Kristin M. Field
Hey Kristin,
Thanks for the link and caveats. Any idea how these things were calibrated?
Hello All,
Does anyone have any idea which software has the capability of modeling a cold storage (-30 F) for energy analysis?
I talked to customer support of Trace 700 and came to know it does not have that capability.
Thanks,
Fareed Syed EIT, LEED? AP
Equa AB ida ice 4 should be able to do it easily. Not sure about E+.
Sent from my iPhone
Thanks Paul.
Is it a free available software and handy to use?. I am fluent on Trace 700.
You're welcome!
There were different EUI metrics we measured the models against to make sure the results seemed reasonable (related to CBECS statistics, industry rules of thumb, or DOE's Advanced Energy Design Guides). Since these are public, some people have given suggestions that we have incorporated - ranging from random enthusiasts to ASHRAE committee members to inter-lab collaboration to design professionals in the field relating to certain building types. The models get updated on approximately the same schedule as E+ software (twice annually), so that gives DOE a chance to continually improve them. Of course, there is a range of what could be considered correct since these models don't represent specific buildings and, therefore, wouldn't be calibrated against specific utility data.
Let me know if that didn't answer your question.
Kristin