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Pressures on building designers are rapidly shifting as renewable energy dominates new supply, as the electricity end-use consumer becomes more integrated into the energy supply structure, and as buildings become increasingly needed to shelter in place. Features of this new generation of standard design include thermal resiliency to better ensure occupant safety, comfort, and health in power outages, buildings that can operate with low or no greenhouse gas emissions, and systems that can interact with electricity grids increasingly dependent on variable renewable power. The rapid pace of change dictates that codes and standards should be developed that can ensure that these future-proofing design are widely vetted and documented to guide standard practice construction. Codes and standards can do that. This paper will consider how work underway in ASHRAE Standards 189.1, 227p, 228p and IEEE Standard 1547 as well as in market facing programs such as Passive House, is beginning to standardize some of these key changes in design practice. The paper then proposes that IECC and ASHRAE 90.1 are uniquely positioned for comprehensive regulatory strategies that engage these and other standards to meet the new challenges. By establishing measures for new construction and existing buildings in the nation’s model energy codes, these stalwart documents can ensure that buildings are designed for a paradigm most relevant to their use: not relying on the decades old energy code paradigm now on the books, but rather looking forward to meet the needs of owners, occupants, and the communities in which they are located. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Buildings consume approximately 40% of total energy consumption in the U.S., thus there is significant motivation to make buildings more efficient. Existing studies have implemented a range of control strategies to save energy in typical commercial buildings. However, academic buildings at universities can vary substantially from typical office buildings in their space use, occupancy patterns and energy use. This paper aims to evaluate the energy savings potential of implementing occupant-based control (OBC) for HVAC systems in typical academic buildings using the energy simulation engine EnergyPlus. A U.S. DOE Commercial Building Prototype Model was modified to represent the typical characteristics and space use compositions of academic buildings based on the space type and functional use data collected from 8 U.S. universities. The occupancy schedules were then replaced with stochastic academic building-based occupancy schedules, developed from a prior study by the authors. Next, the baseline and proposed models were built, of which a fixed setpoint schedule and minimum outdoor air flowrate were used for the baseline model. The proposed model resets the temperature schedule and minimum outdoor air flow schedule based on the proposed occupancy schedules, following the recommendations of ASHRAE Standard 90.1-2019, and ASHARE 62.1-2019. The results of this work provide typical academic building models with integrated occupancy schedules which can be used to evaluate energy saving measures, and aid building designers and operators in making informed decisions in applying appropriate control strategies to optimize building energy systems, as well as predict energy use and demand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper identifies and examines several formats or structures that could be used to create the next generation of more efficient energy codes and standards for commercial buildings. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy's Building Energy Codes Program (BECP) to provide technical support to the development of ANSI/ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.1. While the majority of PNNL's ASHRAE Standard 90.1 support focuses on developing and evaluating new requirements, a portion of its work involves consideration of the format of energy standards. In its current working plan, the ASHRAE 90.1 committee has approved an energy goal of 50% improvement in Standard 90.1-2013 relative to Standard 90.1-2004, and will likely be considering higher improvement targets for future versions of the standard. To cost-effectively achieve the 50% goal in manner that can gain stakeholder consensus, formats other than prescriptive must be considered. Alternative formats that include reducing the reliance on prescriptive requirements may make it easier to achieve these aggressive efficiency levels in new codes and standards. The focus on energy code and standard formats is meant to explore approaches to presenting the criteria that will foster compliance, enhance verification, and stimulate innovation while saving energy in buildings. New formats may also make it easier for building designers and owners to design and build the levels of efficiency called for in the new codes and standards. This paper examines a number of potential formats and structures, including prescriptive, performance based (with sub-formats of performance equivalency and performance targets), capacity constraint based, and outcome based. The paper also discusses the pros and cons of each format from the viewpoint of code users and of code enforcers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the development of a fenestration performance map that will help the building system designer cross-examine code compliant fenestration systems from the human comfort standpoint. The work presented here is obtained using the BCAP program that was developed during ASHRAE research projects 657 and 907 and improved upon in ASHRAE research project 1162 to incorporate a user-defined fenestration system. Human thermal comfort in a room is strongly influenced by the presence of a fenestration system because of the distinctly different thermal and optical properties it possesses in comparison to the walls. Thus, sizing the fenestration system from the thermal comfort standpoint remains the biggest challenge for building designers. This paper presents a possible solution to the challenge in the form of a fenestration performance map, which will help the designer make judicious choices when selecting a fenestration system. The paper also discusses the location of a room heating system during winter to achieve maximum comfortable floor space area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]