Page 218 - Green Building Through Integrated Design

194 CONCEPTUAL AND SCHEMATIC DESIGN

process loses about 67 percent to 75 percent of all primary energy on its way from the
power plant to you; by contrast, onsite power production is about 80 percent efficient
in delivering primary energy to end uses. Decisions about employing onsite energy
production systems should be made during the schematic design phase.
At this stage of design, how we approach the problem is just as important as what
we actually end up doing. A former colleague, Andy Frichtl, a mechanical engineer
with Interface Engineering in Portland, Oregon, led the mechanical and electrical
design team for the world’s largest LEED Platinum building (as of the spring of 2008).
He advances eight basic design approaches to energy-conscious design at this stage.*

■ Estimate the amount and kind of free energy from onsite sun, wind, and water
resources, along with seasonal air, groundwater, and earth temperatures.
■ Using the building program, estimate daily, seasonal, and annual energy use pat-
terns, including time of day variations.
■ Estimate energy end-uses by type (heating, cooling, hot water, lighting, pumps and
motors, ventilation fans, and plug loads) and then attack the largest end-uses
aggressively (Fig. 10.2).
■ Develop a plan for reducing end-use demand through building envelope strategies,
higher-efficiency equipment, and daylighting, for example.
■ Plan to harvest available natural resources.
■ Plan to use energy storage systems to moderate peak loads and shift them to off-
peak.
■ Right-size all mechanical systems by using good analysis of actual requirements.
■ Allow for easy expansion of mechanical and electrical systems to serve changing
uses of the space, thus building flexibility into the sustainable design program.

Figure 10.2 Early energy estimates for energy efficiency goals help teams
to decide on the most productive areas for design explorations.

*Engineering a Sustainable World: Design Process and Engineering Innovations for the Center for Health and
Healing at the Oregon Health & Science University River Campus, 2005, Portland, Oregon: Interface
Engineering, Inc., p. 19.