ASHRAE Journal - September 2014 - 75

2014 ASHRAE TECHNOLOGY AWARD CASE STUDIES

ABOVE Earth tube installation.
LEFT Central atrium with social stair and day-

light scoop at top.

The design team's overarching effort was to minimize
EEEL's use of energy, water and material resources wherever feasible and maximize indoor environmental quality.
A secondary goal of the project was to provide every regularly occupied space within the building access to daylight.

Energy Use
The modeled reduction in energy relative to an
ASHRAE Standard 90.1-1999 reference building without
inclusion of the university's district energy system (DES)
was 58% savings, when including the campus DES, savings were 68%.
Chilled water use, hot water use, total electrical consumption and lighting electricity use data is continuously
monitored (Figure 1). The actual energy use (reporting
period between July 2012 and June 2013) measured 6%
higher than the predicted energy results with a measured
annual energy use intensity of 83.6 kBtu/ft2 versus 78.6
kBtu/ft2 (949 400 kJ/m2 versus 892 600 kJ/m2) predicted. A
heating and cooling degree day analysis was completed for
the data set, revealing that there were 38% more cooling
degree days and 1% fewer heating degree days during the
reporting period compared to the simulated weather file.
The energy model does not reflect the final development
of the fifth floor shelled space (originally modeled as office
space) into intensive research laboratory development. It
would follow that the 6% gap between actual energy use
and predicted is less, and if the energy model were modified to reflect fifth floor end use, the gap would disappear
with the building performing better than predicted.

Water Conservation
Water use strategies are intended to allow EEEL to not
only reduce its overall consumption of water resources,
but most especially, minimize the use of potable water

resources wherever possible. Roof drainage is routed
through cyclone trash filters and directed to an underground 28,700 gallon (108 641 L) storm water cistern.
Water is delivered through a variable speed pumping
system and piping network for reuse in flushing toilets and urinals. When captured rainwater volumes
are insufficient to meet demand, cistern water is augmented with campus post processed river water.
The university uses river water for condenser water in
the central chiller plant; by regulation, the water cannot
be directly returned to the river so is used a second time
to augment the storm water cistern and irrigation. The
use of water-efficient plumbing fixtures such as infrared controlled dual flush toilets and pint flush urinals
stretches the amount of storm water available for flushing purposes. EEEL is able to reduce its potable water
consumption by 64%.

HVAC
Rather than a regionally typical forced-air ventilation/cooling system with perimeter baseboard heating,
innovative European based low energy approaches were
adopted. Ventilation and sensible cooling duties were
decoupled to save cooling transport energy and allow the
use of high-temperature cooling strategies. Exhaust air
heat/cool recovery, displacement ventilation and radiant

Electricity (MWh)

Problems to be Solved

1,000
800
600
400
200
0

JUL AUG. SEP. OCT. NOV. DEC. JAN. FEB. MAR. APR. MAY JUN.

Reporting Period Measured Consumption

Simulation "Normal" Consumption

FIGURE 1: Measured versus predicted energy use.

SEPTEM BER 2014

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ASHRAE Journal - September 2014

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