Your building envelope recommendations for this practice exercise should feature:
- Your recommended settings for the Insight Factor tiles
- A screenshot from Insight showing the Predicted Mean EUI and the range of values resulting from your assumptions
Baseline Scenario:
- R38 Roof Construction
- 12/5 Operating Schedule
Building Envelop-Related Design Decisions:
The lowest projected EUI that I achieved through making adjustments to the Baseline model that solely targeted building envelope and related elements was 38.6 kBtu/ft2-yr
Below were the adjustments made and the corresponding values:
- Wall Construction: R38 Wood
- Infiltration: 0.17 ACH
Power and Lighting Measures:
When only power and lighting measures were targeted for modulation in the baseline model, the lowest project EUI that I achieved was 35.0 kBtu/ft2-yr, which is around 3.6 kBtu/ft2-yr lower than the simulation that implemented only changes to the building envelope.
Below were the adjustments made and the corresponding values:
- daylighting + occupancy controls
- lighting efficiency: 0.3 W/sf
- plug load efficiency 0.6 W/sf
Combined Power and Lighting measures + Building Envelope design changes:
When the above power and lighting measures were paired with the selected building envelope design changes, I achieved a building EUI of 30.5 kBtu/ft2-yr, which is lower than the EUI generated by targeted each area in isolation.
Benefits of PV Panels:
By adding PV panels to the Baseline model, the site EUI can be reduced to as low as 1.51 kBtu/ft2-yr.
The following PV details were implemented to achieve this result:
- PV panel efficiency: 20.4%
- PV payback limit: 30yr
- PV surface coverage: 90%
Combining All Design Changes and Operation Measures
- The combination of all the above design changes and operation measures related to the building envelope, power and lighting, and PV panels yields a building EUI of -11.3 kBtu/ft2-yr. This negative value means that the building is not only net zero, but actually produces excess energy.
