[Equest-users] Process Load & LEED Documentation

[Daniel Kaler]

Hello All,

My question is regarding the 25% process load as required by LEED online. I'll give a little background on the building first...

The building is located in northern Minnesota, rendering it a heating dominate building. Our HVAC system is a geothermal water-to-air heat pump system with an electric back up boiler. There will be no gas usage. For this scenario, system type 4 was used for the baseline case. Since a majority of the winter will be spent below the heat pump operating temperature, in heating mode, electric resistance is the main source of heating. This being said, my baseline system has a very large annual heating consumption.

Now to my dilemma. With the large heating consumption in the baseline design, the process load was below the 25% threshold. I was advised to increase the plug load until I was able to surpass the 25%. After multiple iterations, I came to a value of 3.7 W/sqft for the office spaces (the building is primarily offices). Obviously this is much greater than anticipated for offices spaces.

Initially the process load was 30% with my proposed design, but after the modifications the process load was roughly 50% of my total energy consumption. To my knowledge the only other option we have to is document each piece of equipment contributing to the process load.

Has anyone encountered the problem before and have advice on a solution?

Thanks in advance.

Daniel Kaler
Energy Engineer, EIT


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