[Equest-users] Process Load & LEED Documentation

Daniel Knapp danielk at arborus.ca
Fri Mar 2 08:50:22 PST 2012


Hi Daniel,

My understanding is that if you can document the reasons for the process load being less than 25% (as you have below) you should be fine.  I don't think arbitrarily adding process energy to your building is what LEED is looking for.  Is this what your reviewer specifically asked you to do?

Cheers,
Dan

—
Daniel Knapp, PhD, LEED® AP O+M
danielk at arborus.ca

Arborus Consulting
Energy Strategies for the Built Environment
www.arborus.ca
76 Chamberlain Avenue 
Ottawa, ON, K1S 1V9 
Phone: (613) 234-7178 ext. 113
Fax: (613) 234-0740



On 2012-03-02, at 10:04 AM, Daniel Kaler wrote:

> 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
>  
>  
> MEP ASSOCIATES
> engineers  |  consultants  |  commissioning
> MEP Associates, LLC | 2720 Arbor Court | Eau Claire, WI 54701
> Phone: 715.832.5680 | Fax: 715.832.5668 |www.mepassociates.com
>  
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