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Hi all, I have buildings sharing central plant for a LEED project, but it doesn't seem to work well with the "Treatment of District or Campus Thermal Energy in LEED". I saw the answers here, but they don't match either https://unmethours.com/question/1218/leed-modeling-and-purchased-chilled-water-steam/

I am working on a project with two buildings on one site, one commercial C&S, one Hotel - separate submissions for LEED (and code). The two buildings are sharing only a condenser water loop – one central cooling tower set, one boiler plant to boost the loop. Both systems will use water source heat pumps.

The campus document talks about a district energy system as being a system that provides thermal energy “heating via hot water or steam, and/or cooling via chilled water”. My condenser water loop is obviously neither, but the document only really talks about heating and chilled water, which will cover 99% of shared plant I guess. If I follow the guide it tells me to make both my baseline and my proposed purchase heating and chilled water, so not what is being built.

Am I supposed to just ignore the central plant and treat them as separate water loops? There are theoretical energy savings from putting two buildings with different profiles on the one loop, and there are also capacity reductions available, but using the guide doesn't seem any kind of logical. Losing those theoretical savings isn't going to kill my result, but I'm trying to be sure that GBCI will actually accept the approach I take.

Thanks

Hi all, I have buildings sharing central plant for a LEED project, but it doesn't seem to work well with the "Treatment of District or Campus Thermal Energy in LEED". I saw the answers here, but they don't match either https://unmethours.com/question/1218/leed-modeling-and-purchased-chilled-water-steam/

I am working on a project with two buildings on one site, one commercial C&S, one Hotel - separate submissions for LEED (and code). The two buildings are sharing only a condenser water loop – one central cooling tower set, one boiler plant to boost the loop. Both systems will use water source heat pumps.

The campus document talks about a district energy system as being a system that provides thermal energy “heating via hot water or steam, and/or cooling via chilled water”. My condenser water loop is obviously neither, but the document only really talks about heating and chilled water, which will cover 99% of shared plant I guess. If I follow the guide it tells me to make both my baseline and my proposed purchase heating and chilled water, so not what is being built.

Am I supposed to just ignore the central plant and treat them as separate water loops? There are theoretical energy savings from putting two buildings with different profiles on the one loop, and there are also capacity reductions available, but using the guide doesn't seem any kind of logical. Losing those theoretical savings isn't going to kill my result, but I'm trying to be sure that GBCI will actually accept the approach I take.

Thanks

Hi all, I have buildings sharing central plant for a LEED project, but it doesn't seem to work well with the "Treatment of District or Campus Thermal Energy in LEED". I saw the answers here, but they don't match either https://unmethours.com/question/1218/leed-modeling-and-purchased-chilled-water-steam/

I am working on a project with two buildings on one site, one commercial C&S, one Hotel - separate submissions for LEED (and code). The two buildings are sharing only a condenser water loop – one central cooling tower set, one boiler plant to boost the loop. Both systems will use water source heat pumps.

The campus document talks about a district energy system as being a system that provides thermal energy “heating via hot water or steam, and/or cooling via chilled water”. My condenser water loop is obviously neither, but the document only really talks about heating and chilled water, which will cover 99% of shared plant I guess. If I follow the guide it tells me to make both my baseline and my proposed purchase heating and chilled water, so not what is being built.

Am I supposed to just ignore the central plant and treat them as separate water loops? There are theoretical energy savings from putting two buildings with different profiles on the one loop, and there are also capacity reductions available, but using the guide doesn't seem any kind of logical. Losing those theoretical savings isn't going to kill my result, but I'm trying to be sure that GBCI will actually accept the approach I take.

Thanks