Dear modeling colleagues, I'm looking down the road a bit and it looks like this: ASHRAE 90.1 is becoming more restrictive and detailed with every new version. It regulates an ever greater number of design aspects. Pretty soon, it seems there will be very little incentive to go beyond the ever-increasing mandatory minimums for the vast majority of projects. As the baseline becomes more restrictive, the room for improvement becomes less or at least the ROI is poor. Does this sound correct? Am I missing something?
On a related note, there appears to be no option for demonstrating compliance without meeting all the mandatory minimums for "U" value, SHGC, EER, etc. ie, a particular building, in its uniqueness, may comply or exceed compliance when using less than the mandatory minimums - but that seems not to be an option. If it was an option, one could creatively attempt to reduce construction cost while maintaining low energy cost. (Am I correct that "mandatory" always is mandatory?)
