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
Settings:
- Operating Schedule to 12/5
- Roof Construction to R38
Initial result:
Impact of Building Envelope -Related Design Decisions
- Wall surface thermal properties
For wall construction, I chose 12.25 inch -SIP.
- Wall to wall Ratio
For West, South and East walls, I considered less than 30% of the ratio. For North, I just 30%.
- Thermal properties of Glazing Surface and window shading for each orientation
West: Window glass type: Trp-LoE; Window shades: 2/3 win height
East: Window type: Trp-LoE; Window shades: 1/4 win height
South: Window glass type: Trp-LoE; Window shades: 2/3 win height
North: Window glass type: Trp-LoE; Window shades: 2/3 win height
Impact of Power and Lighting Measures
- Plug load efficiency: 0.6W/sf
- Lighting efficiency: 0.3W/sf
- Daylighting & occupancy controls
b. By adding these power and lighting measures, the predicted mean EUI is 23.7 KBtu/ft2/yr.
The benefits of adding photovoltaic panels
- Surface coverage: 75%-90%
- Panel efficiency: 20.4%
- Payback Limit: 20-30yr
b. By adding PV panels, the predicted mean EUI is -13.7 KBtu/ft2/yr
Observations
This is my model history.
As we add more items in our building design, the energy consumption is getting smaller. At last, we successfully achieved “net zero” in the building, which is an good example for passive design. Also, it’s obvious that plug load efficiency and PV panels reduces the most energy. To start with this, I recommend to use more higher efficiency plugs and higher coverage of PV panels or we can add sensors in our building to monitor and cut the unnecessary energy usage.