High Performing Buildings - Fall 2010 - (Page 20)

building TeaM owner david and stephania Kaneda Architect eHdd Architecture general Contractor Hillhouse Construction mechanical engineer rumsey engineers electrical engineer & lighting designer integrated design Associates (ideAs) structural engineer Tipping mar landscape Architect mPA design cabling, consuming half the wire resources and less energy than conventional separate cable systems. Rather than desktop phones, employees use headsets that connect to a voice-over-IP system, translating to further energy savings. lessons learned seek out and eliminate unnecessary drains on electricity. do circuit-by-circuit monitoring to determine what circuits are being used and when. Continue monitoring to determine equipment and systems that are not performing as expected or that have failed or malfunctioned. • ideAs found that the emergency lighting system battery ballasts are using 30 VA per 32 W fluorescent lamp continuously. it is researching alternative emergency lighting technology to eliminate this surprisingly large vampire load. • The original HVAC design ran the ventilation fans whenever the radiant system was on. As a result, fans were running unnecessarily 24 hours a day, since the slow reacting radiant slab needs to run continuously in the winter to ensure comfort in the morning. Currently, the controls are modified to turn the fans on at 6 a.m. and off at 8 p.m. during the workweek. ideAs is investigating a design using a Co2 sensor, occupancy sensors and a temperature sensor to tailor the controls to operate the fans only when they are needed. • A large increase in the monitored energy use of the HVAC system was Another key to large plug-load savings is reducing or eliminating office equipment phantom loads— the energy consumed during long hours of standby. For example, IDeAs found that even its ENERGY STAR -rated laser plotter has no actual off switch, and consumes 30 kWh in standby mode. The solution is to tie the plotter’s circuits to the building security system, so that the machine is shut down when the security system is armed at night and turned on the next day when the security system is disarmed, giving it time to warm up and avoiding any impact on productivity. To further reduce office equipment phantom loads, workstation devices are now plugged into occupancy-controlled power strips. The power to task lights, PC monitors, speakers and other nonessential peripherals will shut down when users leave their desks. The PC itself uses software to go into sleep mode. Monitoring The building incorporates panel boards using a power harness to monitor the performance of the building circuit-by-circuit. This allows the design team to monitor each component of the HVAC system, each lighting circuit and each receptacle circuit, collecting data to measure performance of the various systems. The design team performs in-depth analysis on the interaction of various systems. The collected investigated. The increase was caused by a power outage that reset the energy management system temperature settings to default levels. be aware of new-technology risk. The failure of a technology trial on a small subsystem component isn’t a big threat, but a definite advantage exists for fieldproven technologies from reliable vendors for major subsystems. • ideAs tried a sophisticated linear fluorescent lighting system that featured onboard occupancy sensors, daylight sensors and PC-installed control software to give individual control to software. Although promising, the system proved to be problematic. A key issue was the control software, which frequently conflicted with other applications on the users’ PCs and that needed to be reinstalled whenever operating systems were upgraded. This software control system was replaced with a wireless system that relies on an internet-accessible control dashboard, effectively solving the software conflicts. • ideAs’ cutting edge building-integrated photovoltaic arrays proved to have a design flaw that required the replacement of the entire system, compromising the power output that the system should have supplied and reducing the rebate paid by the utility company. more recently, the supplier entered bankruptcy, placing 20-year warranty agreements into jeopardy. • A new technology in an induction lamp was unavailable at the published introduction date and needed to be substituted. once supplied, all of the lamps, which were designed to provide 15,000 hours of operation and 50,000 switching operations, failed after less than 500 hours and 900 operations. eventually, a different version of the lamp was supplied that is performing to specifications. integrated design makes value engineering more difficult. use of integrated design principles on this project meant that substituting lower cost components affected the performance of other systems. for example, using a lower cost glass did not affect light levels but did increase solar heat gain, subsequently increasing the size of the HVAC system and PV arrays. 20 HigH Performing Buildings fa l l 2 0 1 0

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of High Performing Buildings - Fall 2010

High Performing Buildings - Fall 2010
Table of Contents
IDeAs Z2 Design Facility
Lighting Design Alliance
Manassas Park Elementary School and Prekindergarten
FC Gulf Freeway Office Building
Capturing Condensate
National Australian Built Environment Rating System
Tyson Living Learning Center

High Performing Buildings - Fall 2010