Noel's Green (make that SUSTAINABLE) Blog » Energy

Building Energy Benchmarks explained

noel — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 15:33:26 +0000

About energy benchmarks for energy modeling. There appear to be several separate national energy codes, several California standards, and a growing number of benchmark levels. (ASHRAE/ANSI 90.1, CalGreen, California Title 24, CEC, HERS, Energy Star ratings, etc)
The situation is confusing a lot of folks. Blame the engineers AND politics. Politics is in everything these days it seems.

Definitions and terms :

California Title 24 -2008 = California Energy code 2008 = CEC 2008 = CalGreen

HERS (Home Energy Rating) is a scale where 0 = zero net-energy, and 100 = average energy consumption in 2000. Its a good approach to resolves the issue of the moving baselines. Architectural Energy Corporation has written some white papers on the subject of energy code benchmarking for both residential and non-residential.

A historical footnote: CEC 2005 = ASHRAE 90.1-2007 = HERS 75.
ASHRAE 90.1-2007 and Cal Energy Code 2008 are NOT equivalent (as I had thought).

ASHRAE-90.1-2007 is the LEED benchmark, however, and LEED-NC requires a 10% minimum improvement. Therefore LEED-NC minimum = HERS 67.5

It is pretty common for LEED buildings to get a 20-30% improvement on ASHRAE 90.1-2007. Those buildings HERS rating = 59 to 52.5

CEC 2008 is CalGreen minimum = HERS 53. About the same as common results in LEED-NC

ASHRAE 90.1-2010 is approximately = HERS 50, (has not been adopted by anyone as of 12/31/2011).
CalGreen Tier 1 = HERS 45
CalGreen Tier 2 = HERS 37.

Summary

National Renewable Energy Labs says HERS 37 is the maximum technically feasible without resorting to onsite energy production methods. The rest of the way to net-zero needs alternatives to the typical gas/oil/electric regime.
Pretty stringent stuff that requires much due diligence. As you get lower and lower in energy intensity, envelope hvac, lighting types and process-loads become more important to the rating game. I am just skimming the surface here.

Here’s a good article on building performance. At the left is a graph: a picture worth a thousand words. There are links to many more reading sources on that page.

I think this covers it for now. Anything else you want to learn? Feel free to contact me.

The Correct Definition of Cap and Trade/Read more, please!

noel — Sun, 19 Sep 2010 15:27:47 +0000

Misinformation spreads like wildfire among those who do not read or watch more than one source of news. So-called conservative groups, like the Heritage Foundation, are particularly good at confounding this group.

The truth : According to Wikipedia’s Cap and trade definition, it is where

…an aggregate cap on all sources is established and these sources are then allowed to trade amongst themselves to determine which sources actually emit the total pollution load.

What about this constitutes a tax? Why do so many neighbors of mine think it’s a tax? Answer: TMFN — Too much Fox News. Lying Fox News.

This is a free market “mechanism”. You can make money trading these credits, creating new ones and selling them on the market to an Emitter/seller, i.e. A party who operates/ owns a hydroelectric generating installation could sell credits to a party which operates/owns a fossil fuel generator. This does not make me think of a “tax”. The profits go to the swiftest and most useful, and not government bureaucracy.

Further misinformation from opponents: Cap and trade will drag the economy down and eliminate millions of jobs.

Yes, it _may_ actually hurt the job market, in a small way, for a few years. But it will stimulate investment in new technology. It will cause some pain in the business-as-usual, fossil-fuel dependent sectors. Yes, that also means some oil and gas companies will die. Too bad. But for the greater good.

Here is what the Annenberg Public Policy Center said:

According to projections by the Energy Information Administration and the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, the net effect of the House cap-and-trade bill will likely be to slow future job growth. Using 11 different possible future scenarios, EIA projects that future job growth might be constrained by something between 388,000 (under the most optimistic assumptions) and 2.3 million (assuming everything goes badly) 20 years from now. CBO also says employment would likely be lower than it would without the legislation – but only “a little.”

(The worse case scenario (unemployment 0.8% higher in 2030 than the “left-alone” scenario) assumes that we are completely unable to execute any carbon trades with the larger international partners, like China and India). But the American economy will be more competitive (and larger) if we do something rather than nothing. Doing nothing risks that might cost us a lot more than the risk of 0.8% higher unemployment.

Wall Street Journal reports on pros and cons of Carbon trading

FYI
Here is a map of Current Cap and trade jurisdictions

Whats interesting to me is that the three states with the
highest carbon emissions, Texas, Indiana and Pennsylvania, are not joiners. Tsk, tsk!

Building Re-commissioning

noel — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 17:12:52 +0000

A review of

Building Commissioning: A Golden Opportunity for Reducing Energy Costs and Greenhouse Gas Emissions
By Evan Mills, Ph.D.
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for: CEC (PIER) July 21, 2009

This white paper contains some compelling arguments in favor of re-commissioning. Money and energy are two items. A building is a kind of organism. We tend to forget that nature and behavior tend to tear and break things down. The passage of time wears things out and we have to maintain our buildings, and just like cars, they need to be tuned up regularly. It’s amazing how much money is being lost by neglecting to do a tuneup. Government and institutional buildings are especially prone to this benign neglect. In government, its often a case of out of sight, out of mind.

Distractions divert us from what is important

noel — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 15:36:48 +0000

Stephen Covey’s book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, says that getting to where we want to be requires focus on the “wildly” important. Covey said that it is all too easy to get off-focus. Often, we get pulled off-course by a myriad of “urgent” demands in our everyday lives. Covey notices that people who are successful or happy, do it by staying focused on the “important.” It is all too easy to get distracted.

Take this distraction: American politics.

We have a terrible engineering and environmental disaster as a result of BP Oil’s sloppiness and lack of foresight. They took chances and sadly, have lost.

Now there’s a clip on the news, of the US Representative from Texas, Joe Barton, apologizing to the chairman of BP Oil. Apologizing for President Obama making BP take full responsibility for the blowout and the damages.

Barton is the clown in this strange comedy of errors. We the people did not have much oversight over deep water rigs and OUR waters. Somehow, we never considered what might happen if and when something like this would happen. But risk was downplayed and there was no plan. It is an error to believe that big corporations can fully regulate themselves.

(The engineers at BP might have raised a flag, but no one paid them any mind.)

Now here comes a clown, apologizing to BP for ruining the Gulf of Mexico and the coastal environment for our children’s children. I am ashamed of that guy.

Distracted from what is wildly important. And the politicians do not have a clue.

Dependence on oil has a BIG cost

noel — Mon, 03 May 2010 22:28:06 +0000

the common Oil slick

The massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is too big price to pay for our dependency on oil. Now we have to re-evaluate our energy plans. FINALLY. The sustainable approach is to stop drilling and spend more money on energy conserving measures and renewables.
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In this months supplement to Engineered Systems magazine, there was an interesting editorial
The Way I See It: Saving Billions — One Customer At A Time by Randy Rawson, the President of the American Boiler Manufacturers Association. He said:

“The great unfathomable mystery of why commercial, institutional, and industrial upper management remains so averse to saving money and, where appropriate, increasing shareholder value through greater attention to their energy use continues to dog this industry, despite all our efforts to the contrary.

So why is industry dogged by an aversion to saving money? I am sure it is lack of proper education and understanding. Science and math have been battered and beaten down in the US. So many good brains have ended up playing on Wall Street. This is a case of lots of money and potential income streams “hiding in plain sight” due to lack of recognition by those in charge.

Imagine a mile long parade of armored cars, all filled to bursting with 100 dollar bills, passing by a board room during a meeting. The parade stops for a moment, and then returns to the bank. When the executives ask why the money was not delivered, the engineers tell them, “Sorry, you have to TAKE ACTION FIRST (replace the boilers), then you get the money, you monkeys!”

Report Dispels doubts on Conservation Measures

noel — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 16:43:20 +0000

This Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory report, Building Commissioning: A Golden Opportunity for Reducing Energy Costs and Greenhouse-Gas Emissions should inform the skeptics about the efficacy of this process for buildings. Regular tuneups for your car are the norm, so the same should be for your building.

I quote:

“This report responds to a widely held concern that end-users do not have confidence in the nature and level of energy savings that can be achieved through the commissioning process.”

This is what I think of when they say “sustainable”: The report states that there is a 16% median annual rate of return on investment for existing buildings and and 13% median annual return on new construction. EXCELLENT. How many other investments bring in that rate of return on a sustained basis?

The report continues:

Applying … [this] to … non-residential buildings corresponds to an annual energy-savings potential of $30 billion by the year 2030… An industry equipped to deliver these benefits would have a sales volume of $4 billion per year and support approximately 24,000 jobs.

EXCELLENT!

President Theodore Roosevelt had it right!

noel — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 02:28:14 +0000

Let us go back to the tried and proven. The Bush sponsored tax cuts did not do what they were supposed to do. We forgot to take Teddys advice, as quoted below.

The tax cuts did not increase our national economic vitality one wit. They should be allowed to expire post-haste. Especially since we need the money to offset more energy conservation tax incentives (such encouragement creates public good). US policy should lead the world in energy conservation, not follow!

About taxes, Teddy Roosevelt(who is among my most admired people), said:

No man should receive a dollar unless that dollar has been fairly earned. Every dollar received should represent a dollar’s worth of service rendered–not gambling in stocks, but service rendered.

The really big fortune, the swollen fortune, by the mere fact of its size, acquires qualities which differentiate it in kind as well as in degree from what is possessed by men of relatively small means.

Therefore, I believe in a graduated income tax on big fortunes, and in another tax which is far more easily collected and far more effective–a graduated inheritance tax on big fortunes, properly safeguarded against evasion, and increasing rapidly in amount with the size of the estate.

Words to remember in November.

Some of my friends want me to clarify what I mean above. If Teddy had it right 105 years ago, and we had a balanced budget in the 1990s (Republican controlled Congress/Democratic President combination), we should have stuck with it. Democracy like ours really suck when voters get confused and switch the formula, like we did in 2000. Once upon a time, I had a theory about an optimal combination, a Dem president and a Repub congress, and I will be damned if that didn’t work under President Clinton. Looks like we might even get back to that state, but it will take 6 more years of President Obama working with a Republican Congress just to get back to where we were when Bush got elected in 2000.

Better HVAC can save $48 billion/year in the USA

noel — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 21:16:55 +0000

The latest numbers are that US buildings consume $320 billion/year in energy. 2/5 of all the energy used in the US. And about 40% of the energy (costing $120 billion/year) is used in buildings for HVAC.

Some of the 2009 stats HVAC designs that I have incorporated recently into my office building projects are expected to use 30% less than the levels allowed by the local and state building codes. (ASHRAE Energy code 90.1-2004).

Consider that more than 70 percent of existing commercial buildings in the country were constructed prior to 1980 (according to floor area, see this 2001 study) . It is very likely that most of these older buildings consume well over the present building code allowable.

There are no laws requiring them to retrofit. The financial incentive to retrofit is all that exists, and unfortunately, this is another example of out-of sight, out-of-mind ignorance. (and HVAC and building energy use in general getting no respect).

These buildings should be retrofitted to reduce energy use a minimum of 30% and more. Up to $48-60 billion per year is being simply wasted. Wow! That is $200 a year for every man woman and child in the US. Almost half as much as we throw away on the war in Iraq. ($130 billion in 2007)

Hey, what are you waiting for, lets find out where the energy is going!

Lighting… I did not mention lighting: higher efficiency lighting and optimal daylighting could save ANOTHER $20 billion /year easy.

If you still a skeptic, please read: “Working Toward the Very Low Energy Consumption Building of the Future”

Getting a View of Energy Consumption in your building

noel — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:58:13 +0000

Trends: Read the chart on your buildings energy usage. Monthly charts can usually be found on the monthly utility bills. Usually, your utility company can provide a history of usage. The hourly or daily usage charts can reveal patterns of usage which can be reveal whether your building is running at its best.

What does a trend chart look like?

An example of a daily building trend chart

The US Department of Energy has a gather and track data process listing the following steps.

STEP 2: Assess Performance
* 2.1 Gather Data
* 2.2 Establish Baselines
* 2.3 Benchmark
* 2.4 Analyze Data
* 2.5 Technical Assessments & Audits

Let’s look at Step 2.1, ‘Gather data’.

Daily and hourly charts are more detailed require additional metering devices. This is a deeper and more involved, as we will see.

If your building has a control center, it is very possible, that energy consumption patterns can be found in the computer logs. In many older buildings, this may be problematic. This is where upgrades to metering should start.

Deciding on what to measure and then installing the meters and using the data correctly is the key. By studying the building systems, and determining what wires or pipes are carrying the “energy in question”, we can be sure we are installing the meter(s) in the correct physical location.

Next, installing a communication link between these meters and a data collection center, such as a desktop computer, creates the basic data collection network. The cost of this approach is extremely reasonable. Wireless measuring devices are becoming very widespread. In fact, with IP networking, whether hard wired or wireless, it is an incredibly simple and cheap way to get a handle on this.

Having the data in hand will help the engineers and operators. But we want to understand how the building system in question is being controlled. The charts can be complicated. Decomposing the building systems down to their simple points will yield a lot of valuable information. once it is charted. Having your building engineer or an outside consulting engineer experienced in HVAC controls is often necessary.

More reading about energy measurement and metering and a prior article on measurement in Noels Green Blog.

What are we measuring?

Motors, lights and electric resistance heaters are the major electric energy consumers. Boilers, unit heaters and furnaces are the major gas/oil consumers.

Of course, a major component of electric use is the ‘plug loads’, which is equipment actually plugged in. These are usually in the control of the user/occupants themselves. They include computers, task lighting, televisions, refrigerators and so on.

Electric heaters are often being used by user/occupants who feel cold and do not get their complaints/needs heard or met. This is unfortunately, a ubiquitous problem in the USA, just now getting serious attention after years of ignoring.

The next wave

Now here is a very nice “downstream” application for building information modeling. It is not getting much attention. Yet.

The same Building Information Model which is being used to design and build with, can easily be re-used as a framework for the building control center! Metering and all other energy systems mapped in the BIM? You would have a ready-made view of the Building Energy Consumption!

This has been a theoretical possibility for many decades, but the cost and complexity of it was such that no one besides a NASA or a nuclear research lab could implement it. Now we have a chance to see the possibilities of such high powered data collection and analysis being done on a desktop computer. Hooray for IT!

Attention general public : Buildings have the greatest energy footprint, not cars

noel — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 18:33:30 +0000

The guys over at Autodesk made this cute animation to drive the point home

The Buildings Sector accounts for about 40% of U.S. Energy, 72% of Electricity, and 34% of Natural Gas use. Building energy costs totaled $390 billion in 2006.
The Buildings Sector accounts for about 40% of U.S. Energy, 72% of Electricity,
and 34% of Natural Gas use. Building energy costs totaled $390 billion in 2006.
Source: Buildings Energy Data Book, Sept. 2008