Engineering topics
Publications and source records attributed to Athalye, Rahul A.
This paper describes a real life project conducted by the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and PNC Financial Services Group's design team. This is a demonstration project supported by the U.S. Department of Energy's Commercial Partnerships Program, the goal of which is to design and construct a new-zero energy bank branch in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
The Pacific Northwest National Laboratory measured and analyzed the energy end-use patterns in a bank building located in the north-eastern United States. This work was performed in collaboration with PNC Financial Service Group under the US DOE’s Commercial Building Partnerships Program. This paper presents the metering study and the results of the metered data analysis. It provides a benchmark for the energy use of different bank-related equipments. The paper also reveals the importance of metering in fully understanding building loads and indentifying opportunities for energy efficiency improvements that will have impacts across PNC’s portfolio of buildings and were crucial to reducing receptacle loads in the design of a net-zero bank branches. PNNL worked with PNC to meter a 4,000 ft2 bank branch in the state of Pennsylvania. 71 electrical circuits were monitored and 25 stand-alone watt-hour meters were installed at the bank. These meters monitored the consumption of all interior and exterior lighting, receptacle loads, service water heating, and the HVAC rooftop unit at a 5-minute sampling interval from November 2009 to November 2010. A total of over 8 million data records were generated, which were then analyzed to produce the end-use patterns, daily usage profiles, rooftop unit usage cycles, and inputs for calibrating the energy model of the building.
This Technical Support Document presents the energy and cost savings analysis that PNNL conducted to measure the potential energy savings of 90.1-2010 relative to 90.1-2004. PNNL conducted this analysis with inputs from many other contributors and source of information. In particular, guidance and direction was provided by the Simulation Working Group under the auspices of the SSPC90.1. This report documents the approach and methodologies that PNNL developed to evaluate the energy saving achieved from use of ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.1-2010. Specifically, this report provides PNNL’s Progress Indicator process and methodology, EnergyPlus simulation framework, prototype model descriptions. This report covers the combined upgrades from 90.1-2004 to 90.1-2010, resulting in a total of 153 addenda. PNNL has reviewed and considered all 153 addenda for quantitative analysis in the Progress Indicator process. 53 of those are included in the quantitative analysis. This report provides information on the categorization of all of the addenda, a summary of the content, and deeper explanation of the impact and modeling of 53 identified addenda with quantitative savings.
In software tools such as COMcheck, use of the EnergyPlus simulation engine for performance-based code compliance raises a concern about simulation runtime which impacts the dynamic feedback of compliance results to the user. EnergyPlus annual simulations for proposed and code base line building models, and the mechanical equipment sizing runs together increase the annual simulation runtime beyond unacceptable duration, for example, to 5 minutes for a typical small commercial building. This report presents a study undertaken to compare the results of a shortened simulation time period, using 4 weeks of weather data to do a simulation of a full 52 weeks of data. Three representative building types and three climate zones were used for determining the validity of using shortened simulation run period. Further sensitivity analysis and run time comparisons were made to evaluate the robustness and run time savings of using this approach. The results of this analysis show that the shortened simulation run period provides compliance index calculations within 1% of that predicted using annual simulation results, and typically saves about 75% of simulation runtime.
Document describing PNNL's project to develop a package of energy efficiency measures that demonstrate the feasibility of achieving a 50% energy savings for quick-service restaurants with a simple payback of 5 years or less.