Major changes to requirements regarding building envelope, lighting, mechanical and the energy cost budget are contained in the newly published energy standard from ASHRAE and IES.
ANSI/ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.1-2013, Energy Standard for Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings, incorporates 110 addenda, reflecting changes made through the public review process. Appendix F gives brief descriptions and publication dates of the addenda to 90.1-2010 reflected in this new edition.
“While many things have changed since the first version of Standard 90 was published in 1975, the need to reduce building energy use and cost has not,” Steve Skalko, chair of the committee that wrote the 2013 standard, said. “This standard represents many advances over the 2010 standard, as we worked toward our goal of making the standard 40 to 50 percent more stringent than the 2004 standard.”
“Achieving the stringency goals established for the 2013 standard presented a challenge in reducing the requirements for lighting,” Rita Harrold, director of technology for the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America, said. “While interior lighting power densities (LPD) were re-evaluated and most lowered, there continues to be an ongoing concern about maintaining quality of lighting installations for occupant satisfaction and comfort while achieving energy savings. The focus in the 2013 standard, therefore, was not just on lowering LPDs but on finding ways to achieve savings by adding more controls and daylighting requirements as well as including lighting limits for exterior applications based on jurisdictional zoning.”
The most significant changes are:
- Building Envelope. Opaque elements and fenestration requirements have been revised to increase stringency while maintaining a reasonable level of cost-effectiveness. Opaque and fenestration assemblies in Tables 5.5-1 through 5.5-8 are revised in most climates. These changes include:
- Criteria requiring double glazed fenestration in many climates
- Minimum visible transmittance/solar heat gain coefficient (VT/SHGC) ratio to enable good daylighting with minimum solar gain, while not restricting triple- and quadruple-glazing.
- Simplification of the skylighting criteria.
- Lighting: These changes include improvements to daylighting and daylighting controls, space-by-space lighting power density limits, thresholds for toplighting and revised controls requirements and format.
- Mechanical: Equipment efficiencies are increased for heat pumps, packaged terminal air conditioners, single package vertical heat pumps and air conditioners evaporative condensers. Also, fan efficiency requirements are introduced for the first time. Additional provisions address commercial refrigeration equipment, improved controls on heat rejection and boiler equipment, requirements for expanded use of energy recovery, small motor efficiencies and fan power control and credits. Control revision requirements have been added to the standard such as direct digital controls in many applications. Finally, the 2013 edition completes the work that was begun on equipment efficiencies for chillers in the 2010 edition.
- Energy Cost Budget (ECB) & Modeling: Improvements were made to the ECB and Appendix G provisions to clarify the use of the prescriptive provisions when performing building energy use modeling. In addition, these sections were revised to enhance capturing daylighting when doing the modeling calculations.
Another important change for the 2013 standard is the first alternate compliance path in Chapter 6. Section 6.6 was added to the 2010 edition to provide a location for alternate methods of compliance with the standard. The first such alternate path has been developed for computer room systems and was formulated with the assistance of ASHRAE technical committee 9.9, Mission Critical Facilities, Data Centers, Technology Spaces and Electronic Equipment. This path uses the Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) metric established by the datacom industry. This alternate efficiency path format provides a framework that could be considered for other energy using facets of buildings not easily covered in the prescriptive provisions of the standard.
Also new to the standard are requirements for operating escalators and moving walkways at minimum speed per ASME A17.1 when not conveying passengers.
The cost of ANSI/ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.1-2013, Energy Standard for Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings, is 135 ($115, ASHRAE members). To order, contact ASHRAE Customer Contact Center at 1-800-527-4723 (United States and Canada) or 404-636-8400 (worldwide), fax 678-539-2129, or visit www.ashrae.org/bookstore.
ASHRAE, founded in 1894, is a building technology society with more than 50,000 members worldwide. The Society and its members focus on building systems, energy efficiency, indoor air quality, refrigeration and sustainability. Through research, standards writing, publishing, certification and continuing education, ASHRAE shapes tomorrow’s built environment today.
Related Stories
| May 1, 2013
Data center construction remains healthy, but oversupply a concern
Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are among the major tech companies investing heavily to build state-of-the-art data centers.
| May 1, 2013
Groups urge Congress: Keep energy conservation requirements for government buildings
More than 350 companies urge rejection of special interest efforts to gut key parts of Energy Independence and Security Act
| May 1, 2013
World’s tallest children’s hospital pushes BIM to the extreme
The Building Team for the 23-story Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago implements an integrated BIM/VDC workflow to execute a complex vertical program.
| Apr 30, 2013
Healthcare lighting innovation: Overhead fixture uses UV to kill airborne pathogens
Designed specifically for hospitals, nursing homes, child care centers, and other healthcare facilities where infection control is a concern, the Arcalux Health Risk Management System (HRMS) is an energy-efficient lighting fixture that doubles as a germ-killing machine.
| Apr 30, 2013
First look: North America's tallest wooden building
The Wood Innovation Design Center (WIDC), Prince George, British Columbia, will exhibit wood as a sustainable building material widely availablearound the globe, and aims to improve the local lumber economy while standing as a testament to new construction possibilities.
| Apr 26, 2013
Apple scales back Campus 2 plans to reduce price tag
Apple will delay the construction of a secondary research and development building on its "spaceship" campus in an attempt to drive down the cost of developing its new headquarters.
| Apr 26, 2013
Solving the parking dilemma in U.S. cities
ArchDaily's Rory Stott yesterday posted an interesting exploration of progressive parking strategies being employed by cities and designers. The lack of curbside and lot parking exacerbates traffic congestion, discourages visitors, and leads to increased vehicles emissions.
| Apr 26, 2013
Decaying city: Exhibit demonstrates the fragility of the man-made world
Theater set designer Johanna Mårtensson built a model cityscape out of bread only to watch it decay.
| Apr 25, 2013
Colorado State University, DLR Group team to study 12 high-performance schools
DLR Group and the Institute for the Built Environment at Colorado State University have collaborated on a research project to evaluate the effect of green school design on occupants and long-term building performance.
