Hi,

In a project to go for LEED, in winter, the heat source is steam purchased from public utility company with fixed rate, say, $5,000/month in spite of the real heating demand, how to simulate this in Equest? ASHRAE 90.1-2004 stated that "For systems using purchased hot water or steam, hot water or steam costs shall be based on actual utility rates, and on-site boilers shall not be modeled in the baseline building design." Is it feasible to choose "no heating" in the proposed case and do some simple calculation instead, say, $5,000/month*3 month=$15,000, to generate a result?

Any comments are welcome. Thanks.

Rick, PE, LEED AP