Conference Year
2016
Keywords
HVAC, Retrofit, Commercial Building, EnergyPlus
Abstract
According to the Commercial Building Energy Consumption Survey 2003 (CBECS 2003) conducted by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, over 70% of existing commercial buildings across the United States are more than twenty years old, with many of these buildings soon in need of renovation. Also, CBECS 2003 reports that existing small- and medium-sized commercial buildings (smaller than 200,000 square feet) consume about 75% of the energy used in these buildings, which means there is a great potential for energy savings with integrated technologies and building retrofit solutions, such as HVAC and envelope integration, and window and lighting integration. The primary focus of this study is to compare the annual performance of different types of HVAC equipment in existing small- and medium-sized commercial buildings, and to identify appropriate HVAC systems that could be retrofit into different commercial building types in a cost effective manner. Prototypical building types and characteristics for baseline models are proposed based on the CBECS 2003 microdata; and annual energy simulation results from EnergyPlus are utilized to analyze the different HVAC retrofit technology options.