Commercial Building

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This paper reports on a laboratory study that uses Virtual Design Construction (VDC) modeling and Extreme Collaboration (XC) for early phase building project design. The process creates a specific project ontology that forms the initial design of a building project. Our project ontology explicitly represents the functional requirements, designed forms, and predicted and observed behaviors of the product, organization and process of the project. With collateral drawings, models, analyses and explanations, it becomes the schematic and initial detailed design for the project. We observed a group of six designers (experienced graduate students) developing a first draft project proposal bid for a real project scenario. They created a high-level project model containing about 40 product, organization and process objects that represented their solution to the problem specification. They created and documented a design in one day at a level of detail that often takes engineers weeks to establish using traditional processes. For simplicity, we represented the evolving ontology in Excel and projected it and the corresponding product, organization and process models for all to see in the design meeting. While large generic building project ontologies exist, e.g., the Industry Foundation Classes, we find that our ontology is so simple that teams using any design tools and methods can use it today, and it is helpful. We interpret our results as early evidence that the Tripod engineering process of VDC, XC and use of a generic project ontology together enable a design team to build an ontology for a new project design very rapidly. It can then be used to support downstream detailed design and construction planning and also reuse in other engineering projects.

. Through field studies in large commercial buildings and reviews of building plans, we investigated the effective leakage areas ELAs , air-leakage rates, and conduction heat gains of duct systems. Different methods for measuring air-leakage rates were also compared. ELAs of supply ducts ranged from 0.4 to 2.0 cm 2 per square meter of floor area served, and from 1.0 to 4.8 cm 2 per square meter of duct surface area. On a per-unit-floor-area basis, these duct ELAs are comparable to the values measured in residences. The corresponding w values of duct leakage class were 60 to 270, much higher than the range of 3 to 12 reported by ASHRAE ASHRAE Standard 111as attainable for quality duct construction and sealing practices when leakage at connections to duct-mounted equipment is not considered. The measured air-leakage rates as a percentage of the inlet air flow rate varied from 0% to 30%, with most of the measurements falling between 10% and 20%. Large inconsistencies among the air-leakage rates determined from different measurement procedures exemplify the need for further development and evaluation of measurement methods. Heat gains between the outlet of the cooling coils and the supply registers caused supply air temperatures to increase, on average, by 0.68C to 28C. The corresponding values of conduction effectiveness were 0.75 to 0.90; thus, heat conduction decreased the cooling capacity of the supply air exiting registers by 10% to 25%. Because these results are based on studies in only a few buildings, generalizations from these findings are premature. q 2000 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.

This investigation examines the economics of producing electricity from proton-exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cell systems under various conditions, including the possibility of using fuel cell vehicles (FCVs) to produce power when they are parked at office buildings and residences. The analysis shows that the economics of both stationary fuel cell and FCV-based power vary significantly with variations in key input variables such as the price of natural gas, electricity prices, fuel cell and reformer system costs, and fuel cell system durability levels. The ''central case'' results show that stationary PEM fuel cell systems can supply electricity for offices and homes in California at a net savings when fuel cell system costs reach about $6000 for a 5 kW home system ($1200/kW) and $175,000 for a 250 kW commercial system ($700/kW) and assuming somewhat favorable natural gas costs of $6/GJ at residences and $4/GJ at commercial buildings. Grid-connected FCVs in commercial settings can also potentially supply electricity at competitive rates, in some cases producing significant annual benefits. Particularly attractive is the combination of net metering along with timeof-use electricity rates that allow power to be supplied to the utility grid at the avoided cost of central power plant generation. FCVbased power at individual residences does not appear to be as attractive, at least where FCV power can only be used directly or banked with the utility for net metering and not sold in greater quantity, due to the low load levels at these locations that provide a poor match to automotive fuel cell operation, higher natural gas prices than are available at commercial settings, and other factors. r

Failure of design professionals to consider maintenance element during the design process thus results in higher operating cost, wastage, defects during the post occupancy of a building. Accordingly, this study will discuss the problems and issues that appear in the building management in commercial building in Malaysia as parts of the efforts to enhance the building value. The research was conducted by collecting data from journal articles about the building management issue. Good management of the building will be able to influence the quality of the buildings that remain long, safe and beautiful without any damage and problems. In addition, building a good management can ensure that the facilities available in the building are well and meet the standard. Thus, exposure to the problems and needs in the management of the building would be able to help improve building management systems to be more effective.

This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States government. Neither the United States government nor any agency thereof, nor any of their employees, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference herein to any specific commercial product, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United States government or any agency thereof. The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States government or any agency thereof.

This report is prepared as the combination of research projects conducted by the We wish to thank Karl Brown (CIEE), Mazi Shirakh (CEC), and Dennis Clough (USDOE) for their support and valuable input throughout the course of this project. We also wish to thank Woody Delp (LBNL) for his valuable advice regarding the field characterization work; Oscar Ortiz and David Montano (LBNL) for their assistance in the LBNL project on duct research. We also wish to thank David Jump of Schiller Associates, Bud Offerman of IEESF, and Graham Carter of Ove Arup, Cliff Federspiel and Nora Watanabe (CEDR) for their contributions to the CEDR project on fan research.

Purpose – Electric lighting accounts for a large share of energy consumption in commercial buildings.
Utilization of daylight can significantly help to reduce the need for artificial lighting, increase workers
productivity, customers’ satisfaction and consequently improve sales. However, excessive use of glazing and
absence of lighting controls can contribute greatly to higher energy need for heating and cooling and cause
undesired glare effects. Thus, optimizing the size, position and materials of external glazing, with the addition
of deflectors and dynamic artificial lighting, can become key aspects in the design of sustainable low energy
buildings. The purpose of this paper is to analyze daylight potential and energy performance of a hall-type
commercial building, situated in the cold climate of Finland, by utilizing different combinations of skylights,
windows and lighting controls.
Design/methodology/approach – The authors have used computer simulations to estimate daylight and
energy performance of a single floor commercial building in relation to various combinations of skylights and
windows with variable glazing materials, light deflectors and zonal lighting controls.
Findings – The results show that electric light energy saving potential ranges from a negligible 1.9 percent
to a significant 58.6 percent in the case of glass skylights and wall windows using multi-zone lighting control.
Total delivered energy ranges between increase of 1.5 and 21.2 percent in the cases with single zone lighting
control and between decrease of 4.5 percent and increase of 4.5 percent in the cases with multi-zone control.
The highest decrease in primary energy consumption was 2.2 percent for single zone and 17.6 percent for
multi-zone lighting control. The research underlines the significant potential of electric light energy savings
using daylighting strategies that, including the control of direct solar access for glare and internal gains, can
be more than 50 percent.
Originality/value – This research combines accurate daylight and energy assessment for commercial hall
buildings based in cold climate region with multiple design variations. The novelty of this work is the
consideration of interior elements, shelves and deflectors, in the calculations. This is made possible through
the combined use of validated simulation platforms for detailed annual daylighting and electric lighting
calculation (Radiance and Daysim) and energy analysis (IDA-ICE, Equa Simulation AB). This method allows
to obtain a reliable assessment of the potential of using natural light sources in buildings.

Changes in the standards of thermal comfort in the urban microclimate and in the capital cost of air-conditioning equipment have drastically increased the energy consumption in the building sector over the last decade. At the same time, the integration of renewable energy systems, mainly active solar ones, in buildings has been an area of intense research over the last 30 years. This has also been the case in the field of solar refrigeration, mainly in the field of sorption systems. The analysis discussed in the paper is focused on the state of the art of thermal solar systems use and on the possibilities of combining those with state of the art technologies in sorption refrigeration, in order to cover the cooling demand of residential and commercial buildings. This was done by assessing the available solar and refrigeration technologies as well as by highlighting the situation in the building market, as this is still the dominant factor for the propagation of such systems. 

Advanced window wall systems have the potential to provide demand response by reducing peak electric loads by 20-30% in many commercial buildings through the active control of motorized shading systems, switchable window coatings, operable windows, and ventilated doubleskin facade systems. These window strategies involve balancing daylighting and solar heat gains, heat rejection through ventilation, and night-time natural ventilation to achieve space-conditioning and lighting energy use reductions without the negative impacts on occupants associated with other demand responsive (DR) strategies.