A new standard from the American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) offers a common basis for reporting building energy use and comparison of energy performance. ANSI/ASHRAE Standard 105-2007, Standard Methods of Measuring, Expressing and Comparing Building Energy Performance, provides a method of energy performance comparison that can be used for any building, proposed or existing and that lets users compare different methods of energy analysis.
This standard will help facilitate comparison, design and operation improvements and development of building energy performance standards, according to J. Michael MacDonald, chair of the committee that wrote the standard.
The biggest change to the standard, last published in 1999, is inclusion of building energy performance comparison, which is vital for energy efficiency efforts worldwide, he said. Past versions of the standard provided a basis for reporting energy use but had limited ability to express or compare performance.
The guidance in the standard progresses from energy use index — total annual energy use per square foot — to other indexes, such as energy use per hospital bed, and then to performance comparison frameworks.
The standard also identifies key characteristics that users should consider reporting when performance comparisons are of interest, such as the number of workers, weekly hours of operation, and annual cooling and heating degree days.
For more information, call-800-527-4723 or visit www.ashrae.org/bookstore.
