[Bldg-sim] LEED, Process energy and pools

[James V Dirkes II, PE]

Dear Bldg-Sim community,

 

I've just completed a lovely, accurate, comprehensive building energy model
(in Energy Plus) which contains an indoor swimming pool.  The building is
about 100,000 square feet and the pool area is about 10% of that total.

 

At the end of the year, the heating, cooling, fans and pumps associated with
the pool have consumed 70% of the total building energy!  I was rather
surprised.  I expected it to be a large percentage, but not THAT large!
This, by the way, is the result when using a specialty pool HVAC unit which
recovers and re-uses most of the DX cooling energy and thus greatly reduces
the pool energy total.

 

As far as I can tell, ALL of the pool-related energy is considered by ASHRAE
90.1 and LEED to be "process" energy.  Since "process" energy must be
identical in both the baseline and proposed models, the rest of the building
must accomplish the entire savings . which is pretty darn difficult
(impossible, really) if "process" is too large a percentage.

 

Have any of you successfully modeled a building with a pool and also
received LEED certification?  If so, can you suggest what I might be
missing?

 

Thanks in advance.

 

BPT BizCard_RGB_0507

 

Quid est hoc ad aeternitatem?

 

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