Paper Conference

Proceedings of SimBuild Conference 2012: 5th conference of IBPSA USA

     

Capital Costs and Energy Savings Achieved by Energy Conservation Measures for Office Buildings in the Greater Philadelhia Region

Liam Hendricken, Kevin Otto, Jin Wen, Patrick Gurian, William Sisson
Drexel University, Philadelphia, PA
Robust Systems and Strategy, Taunton, MA
United Technologies Research Centre, Hartford, CT

Abstract: Building stakeholders often need to evaluate energy conservation measure (ECM) retrofit packages to reduce the cost of ownership and energy consumption. The considered alternatives are often ad-hoc and limited to familiar measures. To develop a more systematic evaluation of retrofit options, we study the impact of a wide set of ECMs in combinations as retrofit packages, and assess which combinations offer the most energy conservation for a given investment. We utilize EnergyPlus to evaluate the effectiveness of ECM packages in reducing energy use intensity, and use RSMeans to evaluate the costs of each package. We consider medium office buildings in the Greater Philadelphia region, because this sector offers high potential to reduce building energy consumption in the region. For any level of energy consumption reduction, we find there are several alternative packages of ECMs with varying costs. We identify the least cost alternatives for all levels of energy consumption reduction, and compare these against previous recommendations. This effort is part of an ongoing effort of the Greater Philadelphia Innovation Cluster (GPIC) HUB to create such analyses for common building types in the region.
Pages: 692 - 706
Paper:
simbuild2012_11a_2_Hendricken