This easy-to-use, state-of-the-art software offers construction-industry professionals substantial time savings while completing required energy modeling calculations for LEED® projects.
The Florida Solar Energy Center (FSEC), a research institute of the University of Central Florida, today released EnergyGauge Summit Premier 3.15. FSEC will be exhibiting the software at the Greenbuild conference in Boston Nov. 19 – 21. This state-of-the-art software provides construction-industry professionals with the opportunity to substantially reduce the time required to complete energy modeling for the commercial construction LEED® rating system. It also offers a time-saving automatic federal tax deduction qualification feature.
Summit Premier was first released in November 2007 at Greenbuild Chicago. The new version contains several improvements that make it more functional in its use for LEED and other calculations. They include:
- The required treatment of District Thermal Energy in LEED NC 2.2. EnergyGauge Summit allows users to perform the steps required to incorporate district heating and cooling in their proposed building, as per requirements from USGBC. EnergyGauge automatically models the typically time-consuming two-step calculation process required by the USGBC. Both step 1 and step 2 reports have been automated for saving additional time.
- Profiles and schedules are now editable. The user can modify, or create and assign, space and zone load profiles, and schedules for people, lighting equipment, etc. This will allow modeled building loads to be closer to actual load scenarios.
- TMY3 Weather data now available. The new TMY3 weather data set for numerous locations has been implemented. TMY3 represents a more recent weather data set and is understood to be a more accurate representation of current weather parameters than the old TMY2 weather data set. The user can select either dataset for analysis.
- Several new inputs now available to user. The user can now specify several new inputs, such as outdoor air quantities, thermostat type and range, number of people and/or area per person, and equipment loads. These inputs allow more accurate analysis of the building.
- New reports. EnergyGauge now has additional reports to help modelers understand those periods where the loads are not met by the HVAC system (unmet hours). Profiles and schedule reports have also been added. Additionally, the software includes a printable replica of the LEED online-report.
This easy-to-use new software product is an advancement of a product that is used in Florida for commercial building code compliance by more than 1,500 users. The Premier edition includes nationwide climates and offers the automatic federal tax deduction qualification and LEED® energy optimization features.
The United States Green Building Council’s (USGBC) Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) system is the leading green building rating system in the United States. The organization recently mandated that each project achieve at least two energy optimization points in their rating. EnergyGauge Summit Premier allows engineers to simply enter the design building characteristics and the software calculates everything else for these important point credits.
At Greenbuild’s expo booth 2450, FSEC will demonstrate the ability to complete and submit the LEED 2.2 EA Credit 1 template to the LEED-Online database. This automatic baseline building-generation and template-completion feature will save the typical energy modeler many hours on each building submission.
The software automatically creates the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) standard 2004 90.1 baseline building; performs the ASHRAE 2004 Appendix G rating procedure, and calculates the points achieved for LEED energy optimization. It also calculates ASHRAE Standard 90.1 compliance, based on the performance method, as called for in ASHRAE performance-based energy code compliance methodology.
In addition, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) has listed EnergyGauge Summit Premier as qualified software for calculating energy savings for the energy-efficient, commercial-building tax deduction under Internal Revenue Code §179D.
EnergyGauge Summit Premier performs an annual 8,760-hour simulation, taking just a few seconds on typical new computers. The Windows-based program uses a DOE2 engine, originally developed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory with support from the U.S. Department of Energy.
A free, fully-functional trial version of the new EnergyGauge Summit Premier software can be downloaded at www.EnergyGauge.com. The software retails for $949 per annual license.
About EnergyGauge®
EnergyGauge energy analysis software is produced and distributed by the Florida Solar Energy Center (FSEC), a research institute of the University of Central Florida. EnergyGauge is a registered trademark of FSEC. FSEC has been conducting research on energy efficiency in buildings since 1980. EnergyGauge software products include EnergyGauge Summit for commercial buildings, EnergyGauge USA for residential buildings nationwide and EnergyGauge FlaRes for Florida’s residential code compliance. EnergyGauge is on display at the Greenbuild conference at booth 2450. More information at www.EnergyGauge.com.
About FSEC
The Florida Solar Energy Center, a research institute of the University of Central Florida, is the largest and most active state-supported energy research institute in the nation. Current divisions and their research activities include Advanced Energy Research: alternative transportation systems, hydrogen fuel and fuel cells; Buildings Research: energy-efficient buildings; and Solar Energy: solar water and pool heating and solar electric and distributed generation systems. For more information about the center, visit www.floridaenergycenter.org or call the FSEC Public Affairs Office at 321-638-1015.
About ASHRAE
ASHRAE creates standards used internationally for building energy and ventilation performance such as ASHRAE 90.1 for commercial building energy performance. More information is available at www.ashrae.org.
About LEED®
LEED is a registered trademark of the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) and represents The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System, the nationally accepted benchmark for the design, construction, and operation of high performance green buildings. One of the key elements for earning points in the popular LEED rating system is the buildings energy performance. For new buildings, the applicant can earn one LEED credit point for each 3.5 percent improvement in performance relative to ASHRAE/IESNA Standard 90.1-2004 using the Building Performance Rating Method in Appendix G of the Standard. More information on LEED is available at www.usgbc.org/.
About Greenbuild
Greenbuild is the world’s largest conference and expo dedicated to green building. Scheduled for November 19 – 21, 2009, more than 20,000 building professionals from around the world gather for three days of outstanding educational sessions, renowned speakers, green building tours, special seminars, networking events.
About the Energy Tax Deduction
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 (EPAct 2005) is the first effort of the United States government to address U.S. energy policy since the Energy Policy Act of 1992. Among many other things, the 1,724-page law provides new tax incentives for a number of solar and energy efficiency measures including tax deductions for commercial buildings. This provision offers business taxpayers a deduction of $1.80 per square foot for commercial buildings that achieve a 50 percent reduction in annual energy cost to the user, compared to a reference building defined by the industry standard ASHRAE/IESNA 90.1-2001. Energy costs refer only to heating, cooling, lighting and water heating, since only these uses are within the scope of the ASHRAE standard and within the control of the building designer. More information on the IRS procedure can be found at: www.irs.gov/irb/2006-26_IRB/ar11.html.
Each of the three energy-using systems of the building: the envelope, the heating, cooling and water heating system, and lighting system, is eligible for one third of the incentive if it meets its share of the whole-building savings goal. Explicit interim compliance procedures are provided for lighting.
New construction in an existing building is also eligible for the tax deduction, with one-third of the deduction amount for new construction that affects the new energy-using system (such as lighting or heating, cooling and water heating).
Compliance is determined by third-party inspectors who review the plans and the actual in-place construction. Energy savings are determined by software that must be certified by the Department of Energy as meeting criteria of consistency and accuracy. EnergyGauge Summit is listed as qualified software by the U.S. Department of Energy, visit: www1.eere.energy.gov/buildings/qualified_software.html
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It sucks. Should not have been released yet. Way more difficult than previous version.
Seattle architects tend to have some of the most innovative sustainable design and green building projects in the country. The rest of us should follow their example – The list is long! This architect is one of them you should see..
http://www.seattle-architects.com/
There are many others…the AIA site from Seattle has more info. if you need it. thanks.
FLARES is approaching an effective program. This one needs work:
1. More constructs for common wall and roof types would be useful. Not sure why so many constructs for stone are in here. I know we can make our own constructs, but overall statewide more accurate modeling would occur with common constructs in the master library. Many folks without college engineering are using this program.
2. Ditto for master library materials. More common insulation types would be helpful.
3. An on-the-spot help button would be helpful, like on FLARES
4. The questions asking for fan watts per CFM cause undue calculations. How about asking for supply air, outdoor air, and fan horsepower? Lets have the program do these calculations so users can concentrate on inputs.
5. The efficiency entry for air conditioning is bulky. For instance, if I have given the information that the system is an air cooled split system under 5 tons, why do I still have to choose between SEER and EER?
6. Many spaces are not rectangular. It would be nice to have the option to enter total square feet as an option to length and width. Same with roofs and floors and walls.
7. The door input screen defaults to non-swinging. Most doors are swinging type and that should be the default.
8. Tilt angle for roofs would be easier to input if asked for as a pull down menu for 12:x pitches.
9. Perhaps you are bound by code, but lighting catagories for areas that many buildings have would be great – break rooms, clubrooms, cyber rooms, inactive stairs, apartments
In general, many little annoyances make this program hard to use. User interface overhaul is required to make this an effective tool.
This post is looking very informative. It makes people aware from different type of constructions.
I agree with GravyCrank. The data entry is a lot more difficult than it needs to be. It seems to me the people writing the program have little day to day experience in the arch / HVAC design process of a building.
1) The explanantion what the program is outputing is non-existant. It would be nice to have an explanation of what energy cost are grouped into each category so the designer can make sense out of the results.
1a) The results should show you what the baseline systems are, so deviations from the baseline are apparent.
2) Why does the lighting source and number of fixtures matter in the lighting calculations for each space? It would be better if the only thing required for input was the total amount of lighting wattage for that particular space. All of the other input just adds data input time.
3) A lot of the HVAC system types are the same. A better description of each system is necessary.
4) All of building envelope input should be in square footage and not width by height.
5) The building materials and constructs format is terrible. I have never used a predefined wall or roof. I not sure where these come from but the predefined walls do not even come close to modeling current construction practices in South Florida.
6) There should be a 100% Oustide air system type.
7) In general the program is trying to do more than is necessary to show code compliance. I am for straight prescirptive measure to show energy code compliance. This would take a lot of lying out of the game and code officals will be able to catch people tying to skirt by the energy code. The current code officals have no idea what this sheet is printing and they are not going to see if you entered the data right.
8) I doubt any building has been accurately modeled with this software.
Three years from my first post above and I see no evidence of attempts to improve ease of use in FLACOM or FLARES. It is good that third parties are invited to produce compliance software
I’ve been using energy calcs software since the mid 80s and this has got to be one of the worst applications that I’ve ever used. Nothing is intuitive. And why were the citizens of Florida bilked out of the millions of dollars that this probably took to develop when there is ComCheck from the DOE for free? It appears this app was developed by the University of Florida. Figures that it is a government product. Poor customer support. Help function is worthless. And on and on.
I wonder in Energy Gauge Summit (FLACOM) will ever include cooling and heating load calculating for equipment sizing like the Manual J included in the FLARES software? Seems like that element is missing from FLACOM.