Lessons Learned from Field Evaluation of Six High- Performance Buildings

Abstract

The energy performance of six high-performance buildings around the United States was monitored in detail. The six buildings include the Visitor Center at Zion National Park; the National Renewable Energy Laboratory Thermal Test Facility, the Chesapeake Bay Foundation Merrill Center, the BigHorn Home Improvement Center; the Cambria DEP Office Building; and the Oberlin College Lewis Center. Evaluations began with extensive monitoring for a minimum of one year, which was used to calibrate energy simulation models. This paper will discuss differences between the design energy targets and actual performance, common mistakes in implementing “state-of-the shelf” building technologies, commissioning experiences, policy implications, and lessons learned for future buildings. Overall, energy performance of the buildings will be compared to each other and to code compliant base-case buildings. The owners and design teams for each building had aggressive energy saving goals ranging from 40% to a net-zero energy performance. Some of the design teams also had ambitious goals regarding other dimensions of sustainability such as water management, building materials selection, or obtaining a high LEEDTM score. The focus of this paper is on energy performance. Computer simulations were used for each building during the design process. All buildings used daylighting and good thermal envelopes as part of their high-performance features. Other high-performance features include mechanical and passive evaporative cooling, radiant heating, natural ventilation, mixed-mode ventilation, ground source heat pumps, photovoltaic, and passive solar strategies. A set of performance metrics are presented and discussed. All of the buildings used much less energy on an annualized basis than comparable code compliant buildings.