Question-and-Answer Resource for the Building Energy Modeling Community
 | 1 | initial version |
Great great question. I don't think there is a generally accepted answer, but maybe we can crowd-source one. My contribution will be to report on the data that we are seeing through the AIA 2030 Commitment (2014 progress report was just published, by the way, in case you want to dive deeper). First disclaimer: this is design performance. If firms do post-occupancy M&V, they are not reporting it. We will hopefully close that loop at some point in the near-ish future. Second disclaimer: projects that are not modeled are assigned performance levels that are typical of the prevailing energy-efficiency code for the building type.
That said, the benefit of modeling appears to be 20% at the low end. The reason I say low end is that this number includes a good number of projects that use modeling only for code-compliance or LEED points. We are not yet separating those projects cleanly from projects that use modeling to full effect, i.e., to inform design. We are also seeing a good number of modeled projects with energy savings of over 50%, including a fair number with savings of over 70%. Hard to imagine getting those kinds of savings without whole-building system-level analysis.
