Development of a pre-screening methodology to aid in determining potential energy savings in commercial buildings

• Main Author: Hicks, Dave C.
• Other Authors: Claridge, David E.
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2011
• Subjects: energy; pre-screening; buildings
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2400

This thesis presents a methodology developed to aid in the determination of potential sources and the potential scale of energy savings in commercial buildings. As a pre-screening tool, the methodology is designed to serve as the first analysis of the building’s potential for energy savings using limited data prior to a site visit. A Microsoft® Excel-based tool was developed to perform this analysis semi-automatically with user operation. A fundamental concept used in this methodology is that of the energy balance load, defined as heating plus electricity minus cooling. The methodology is designed to require only historical weather data, historical whole-building energy consumption data, the total conditioned floor area, and the basic function of the building. Upon following a short procedure developed and outlined in this thesis, this limited data yields information that can lead to conclusions about the building’s energy consumption. The output information includes estimates of a major building thermal parameter—the building’s overall heat transfer coefficient including the total outside air flow rate into the building. In addition to providing this information, the Excel tool includes already-formatted plots of the energy consumption commonly used in energy analysis. These include cooling, heating, and electricity vs. both outside air temperature and time. Three case studies illustrate the utility of this methodology. The calculated energy balance load—calculated using parameters determined through this methodology—yielded values on average within 5.4% of measured values.