Conference Year

July 2018

Keywords

Load factors, diversity factors, office equipment, heat gain, Office level diversity

Abstract

Plug loads are one of the main contributors to the overall energy consumption in most office buildings. The plug and miscellaneous loads account up to 50% of the energy consumption in buildings (NBI, 2012). ASHRAE Fundamentals handbook (2017) provides power consumption data for various office equipment and load factor data for various office spaces. Load factors for different office types in the 2017 ASHRAE Fundamentals Handbook are conservative values based on equipment peak power consumption and diversity factor values. The individual equipment diversity factor provided in the Handbook is used to calculate the load factors. However, no data is provided for the office level diversity containing a mix of different equipment. For this paper, power consumption data is collected over three-week period for an office suite containing four different office spaces, each with a different mix of equipment. Load factors are calculated for the office spaces based on the equipment peak power consumption and using the individual, combined equipment, and office level diversity factors. The load factors calculated based on combined equipment diversity factors are compared with those based on individual equipment diversity factors. The calculated load factors are also compared against the load factors provided in 2017 ASHRAE Fundamentals Handbook. References: ASHRAE. 2017. Handbook of Fundamentals. American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air Conditioning Engineering, Inc. Atlanta: ASHRAE. New Buildings Institute (NBI). 2012. Plug load best practices guide: Managing your office equipment plug load. https://newbuildings.org/resource/plug-load-best-practices-guide/ (accessed 12/04/2017)

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