Hello All!

I'm seeking some advice or words of wisdom on a project I'm starting soon. It concerns a 2 building campus type facility where one building is a 100,000sqft classroom/office facility and the other is a 65,000sqft residence facility. Approx 400 students reside in the residence and are joined by approx 50 staff to go to class in the classroom building. This will be a WSHP job in both buildings and I don't know if will be boiler/tower or hybrid yet...planning on hybrid if budget/land are within scope. We are planning on using a central plant type setup with all the equipment to make WSHP source water and domestic hot water in the classroom building which will be pumped to the residence building (about 500 feet) along with also supplying the classroom building. Both of these buildings will be minimum v3 LEED Silver.

To develop the plant size, both buildings will be modeled in one model, and plant and terminal equipment sized accordingly. Separate programs will be used for hybrid analysis, etc.

For the LEED submittal, USGBC seemingly requires each building to be modeled separately and submitted along with a "master site" submittal for certification. My question mainly relates on how to model each building correctly for the LEED submittal:

1.) Is it possible to model WSHP source water for the residence building as a district distribution system? I assume it would be but I'm a bit fuzzy on how Trace might model a WSHP system with a district type setup. Since you assign temperatures to the district supply, I guess you could give it the design temps (85-65, for example, in a B-T system, etc.) and run it worst case source temps for the residence. But, how would you account for the energy use in the classroom building from the residence building load.

2.) Would it be easier or more correct model each building like it was a standalone B-T or hybrid system? This approach might not be very accurate due to duplicated equipment modeling differences from the proposed design.

Any thoughts or ideas or right questions to ponder or lessons learned from the group on how to model these campus facilities would be greatly appreciated!