Rating System

LEED BD+C: New Construction, LEED BD+C: New Construction, LEED BD+C: Schools, LEED BD+C: Schools, LEED BD+C: Core and Shell

Rating System Version

v2 - LEED 2.2, v3 - LEED 2009, v2 - Schools 2007, v3 - LEED 2009, v3 - LEED 2009

Inquiry

This Credit Interpretation Request is in reference to a 92,000 square foot office building and research laboratory that includes a 5000 square foot data center. To obtain credits for Optimized Energy Performance, we plan to estimate the energy consumed using Option 1-Whole Building Energy Simulation as outlined in ASHRAE 90.1, Appendix G. The LEED modeling protocol sets the process load as 25% of the total building energy load. Credit Interpretation for Energy and Atmosphere EAc11 dated 11/3/2006, ruling #5 \'addresses setting the process load at 25% of total energy by default, unless it is a process dominated building\'. The portion of non-regulated energy consumed by the data center equipment and the research laboratory will exceed 50% of the total building load and will dominate the total building energy use. The large non-regulated process load of the data center and research lab will unfairly minimize the percentage of total energy savings applied to the regulated loads. In order to fairly evaluate energy savings of the enhanced building and systems, as well as utilizing photovoltaic arrays, we plan to exclude the energy consumed by the equipment associated with the data center and research laboratory from the energy simulation calculations. It is noted that with the process equipment in the labs and the data center equipment loads, this percentage of energy derived from the PV array will be very small. Is this the proper approach, or should we use the default process load of 25% of the total building load, or the actual loads for these systems?