Group14 Engineering was awarded an ASHRAE Research grant for Project 1627-TRP, “An Evaluation of the Actual Energy Performance of Small Office and K-12 School Buildings Designed in Accordance with the 30% ASHRAE Advanced Energy Design Guides” in July of 2014. Over a period of the next 18 months Group14 will engage in this research with three primary objectives: Objective 1: Compare Energy Utilization Indices (EUIs; site energy use per unit area per year), normalized based on standard hours of operation and plug load energy use, for a sample of small office and K-12 school buildings designed in accordance with the first (30%) ASHRAE AEDGs to the modeled EUIs of small office and K-12 school buildings in the same climate zone that meet the requirements of ASHRAE Standard 90.1-1999. Objective 2: Determine the factors common to relatively well-performing buildings, as well as the factors common to relatively poorly-performing buildings, based on building surveys. Objective 3:Provide recommendations for how future AEDGs for small office and K-12 school buildings could be made more effective in achieving better energy performance than required by ASHRAE Standard 90.1 while providing acceptable indoor environmental quality. Xia Fang, P.E., CEM will serve as the Principal Investigator. Ms. Fang holds a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering and brings to the team a breadth of experience spanning mechanical design for commercial buildings, commercial building energy modeling, and energy audits. She has previous experience in a research capacity at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and is now a senior building energy engineer with Group14 Engineering.
