Real estate owners and developers and the designers and contractors who plan and build their projects have become more aware of the incentives for going green on new and existing buildings. And with energy as the single largest operating expense in a typical commercial building, increasing a building’s efficiency is a key ingredient to achieving their environmentally sustainable goals.
A big question that lingers, however, is how to determine the most effective way to assess and improve the efficiency of their buildings.
Finding Solutions
Today, one answer many building industry participants are turning to is energy modeling software. It helps identify opportunities to achieve higher efficiency in new and existing buildings.
As more building owners begin to see the benefits of energy-efficient buildings, it makes sense to assess energy usage in the same breath as green planning.
The perception that costs associated with green construction are much higher is fading as building owners realize the financial advantage green technologies provide on a life-cycle basis. The U.S. Green Building Council estimates that an upfront investment of 2% in green-design elements will net, over 20 years, a 20% return on total costs.
Benefits aren’t just in cost savings, but energy-efficient buildings also:
- Increased worker productivity
- Reduced facility shut-down times
- Viewed as more valuable and desirable
According to EnergyStar, a joint program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of Energy, every dollar invested in energy efficiency can add up to $3 in building asset value. By reducing energy consumption, building owners can make a significant positive impact on the environment by decreasing their use of natural resources and lowering green house gas emissions.
Various local and state governments offer incentives for making buildings more energy efficient, distributed either as rebates or through tax credits or deductions. Some public entities are also adopting green building priorities.
What are the Potential Savings?
The extent of possible savings is dependent upon many factors such as: the efficiency and health of the existing building systems, local weather conditions, utility rate structures, operational requirements of the building occupants, and the availability of capital for investment in building system upgrades.
Further investigation determined that the building’s variable air volume system, or VAV, had been neglected, with its regular maintenance deferred. After executing the proper maintenance, the system returned to its original intended performance saving the owner almost three million kwh per year.
In terms of maximizing the value of energy modeling, larger buildings typically have more potential for savings, simply due to their greater energy consumption. However, owners of multiple small buildings can benefit because a small savings multiplied by a large number of buildings could result in a significant total savings.
Buildings with more complex systems also have a greater potential for savings, because there are more opportunities to uncover inefficiencies. For instance, a building with one operating system for office space and another for a data center is a prime candidate for energy modeling.
A recent energy model developed for a Trane financial services client identified a clear benefit to installing a crossover connection between office and data center systems. This application provided energy savings by sharing building system resources under specified load conditions.
How Energy Modeling Works
Energy modeling uses a sophisticated software tool to recreate building systems in a simulated environment. The simulation replicates the building’s systems and their interactions to show how the building is currently operating and demonstrates how the systems affect energy performance.
Once the model is complete and tuned, you can virtually run the building in various operating scenarios by changing schedules, control strategies, HVAC equipment or other building parameters. This provides a powerful source of data for making infrastructure improvements in a virtual environment and testing a variety of solutions to determine which would function best in the building before making any physical changes.
Energy modeling can take considerable effort to set up and typically requires hiring an energy engineering professional. A prudent first step is to perform a preliminary assessment of your building’s energy performance to understand the potential for possible energy savings.
Energy-efficient buildings provide environmental benefits to not only owners and building occupants, but also the general population. Energy modeling is an effective tool and a proven method that can identify the significant energy saving opportunities in commercial buildings and help to reduce harmful emissions.
