Development of DOE-2-Based Simulation Models for the Code-Complaint Commercial Construction Based on the ASHRAE Standard 90.1

In 2001, the Texas State Senate passed Senate Bill 5 to reduce ozone levels by encouraging the reduction of emissions of NOx that were not regulated by the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission. These include point sources (power plants), area sources (such as residential emissions), road mobile sources, and non-road mobile sources. For the building energy sector, the Texas State Legislature adopted the 2000 International Energy Conservation Code, as modified by the 2001 Supplement, as the state’s building energy code. The 2000/2001 IECC is a comprehensive energy conservation code that establishes a standard for the insulation levels, glazing, cooling and heating system efficiencies through the use of prescriptive and performance-based provisions. This paper provides a detailed description of the procedures that were developed to calculate the electricity and natural gas savings in new office construction that is being built in compliance with Chapter 8 of the 2000/2001 International Energy Conservation Code. Since most of the commercial portion of the 2000/2001 International Energy Conservation Code refers to ASHRAE Standard 90.1-1999 as the current code requirement for commercial construction, the simulation models based on the ASHRAE Standard 90.1, with general commercial configurations, are created to quantify the electricity and gas savings. Then, simulation models are modified to accommodate the different scenarios of construction and HVAC equipment based on three different codes (i.e., ASHRAE Standard 90.1-1989 (pre-code), 1999 (code-compliant), and 2004 (new-code)). The “pre-code” designation is meant to represent the commercial construction characteristics before the passage of Texas Emission Reduction Plan (TERP) in September 2001. In the simulations, “pre-code”, “code-complaint” and “new code” represent the commercial constructions in compliance with ASHRAE Standard 90.1-1989, ASHRAE Standard 90.1-1999, and ASHRAE Standard 90.1-2004, respectively. This paper includes an explanation of the simulation models developed for the different versions of ASHRAE Standard 90.1, as mentioned above, which are used for investigating the electricity and gas energy savings.