Question-and-Answer Resource for the Building Energy Modeling Community
 | 1 | initial version |
First of all, plug loads depend on projects. They are normally designed by MEP engineers. You can use those reference plug loads only when they are not designed yet e.g. projects in conceptual design phase.
The difference between 0.75W/ft2 and 1.67W/ft2 is that 1.67W/ft2 includes server loads in a office building.
Please refer to the Scorecard of Large Office for ASHRAE90.1 in the following website.
In "Zone Summary" sheet, you can see that the plug loads for office zones are 0.75W/ft2, and there are another loads of 20W/ft2 and 40W/ft2 for data center zones. The average loads for the whole office building are 1.661W/ft2 ≈ 1.67W/ft2.
Therefore, 0.75W/ft2 is considered appropriate for office space without servers or office space with servers in a different location of the building. 1.67W/ft2 is considered appropriate for office space with servers in the same space Or for an office building as a whole if your model is a simple shoe box.
