Paper Conference
ASHRAE & IBPSA-USA SimBuild 2016: Building Performance Modeling Conference
 
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Impact of ASHRAE Standard 169-2013 on Building Energy Codes and Energy Efficiency
Rahul Athalye , Todd Taylor , Bing Liu Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WAAbstract: A more recent period of weather data published in the ASHRAE 2009 Handbook of Fundamentals was used in developing ASHRAE Standard 169-2013. The new Standard remapped counties to climate zones based on the new weather data. More than 400 counties out of a total of over 3,000 in the U.S. were reassigned to different climate zones and most of the counties were reassigned to warmer climate zones. Many code requirements, such as for wall insulation, are less stringent in warmer climate zones. Thus, when a county is reassigned to a warmer climate zone, new buildings built in that county are likely to be less energy efficient than before. The new county-to-climate zone mapping in ASHRAE Standard 169-2013 has been adopted by Standard 90.1 and may be adopted by other codes and standards as well. In this paper, we present the impact of changing the county-climate zone mapping on energy codes and building energy efficiency in the country. The analysis shows that adopting the new county-to-climate zone mapping in ASHRAE Standard 169-2013 results in an overall weakening of ASHRAE Standard 90.1-2013 at the national level while the impacts at the state level can be dramatic, as there are several states where large population centers are reassigned to a warmer climate zone. Pages: 431 - 438 Paper:simbuild2016_C057