Question-and-Answer Resource for the Building Energy Modeling Community
 | 1 | initial version |
For a standard office space, the electrical designer may specify a certain number of receptacles per wall length or area, and build in capacity for space changes etc. The wiring capacity is very conservative (each receptacle at full load, summed, with a safety factor, and with no diversity factor or a very high value). Taking a diversity value on the electrical drawings is compounding several layers of somewhat arbitrary safety factors and load percentages. I think it is better practice to use measured plug load data to calculate the W/sf gain, and just say that the calculation for "expected peak electrical equipment/lighting gain in the space" from an energy modeling perspective is different than the calculation of "appropriate risk reduction to avoid tripping breakers / starting electrical fires".
