This is mostly a plug loads estimate question. Recently, while working on a hotel project we were asked to estimate the PV capacity required for which the energy model developed for LEED was requested to be used.
The electrical engineer's estimate of total building electricity need came much higher than the one from the energy model. After investigating it turned out that the electrical engineer was basing his estimate on the total electrical wiring capacity which came to about 12 W/ft2 of electrical load versus the energy model which was based on traditional plug loads assumptions amounting to about 2 W/ft2 including lighting. This hotel has suites with major appliances and that is why the total wiring load Wattage is quite high. We weren't able to find resources to justify the actual diversity factor for the building loads and went with the assumption that very few guests use those appliances on a regular basis plus the fact that the building occupancy rate is well below 100%.
It gets harder to estimate loads for a hotel project but one can imagine a similar conversation about an office building. I am wondering if anyone has experience with estimating plug loads from the electrical wiring calculations that can share? Obviously, measured data would help with these sort of questions but I am specifically interested in best-practice examples that can be drawn from the electrical design documents with reasonable accuracy.
