John Greggs
University of Calgary
Presented at the Cybera/CANARIE National Summit 2009, as part of the session "Green IT: Does it Work?" In this session, leaders from academia, industry and government debated the value proposition of green IT and its potential to contribute to research, business and policy objectives.
24. Energy Consumption 48% better than ASHRAE 90.1 This energy reduction is achieved primarily by: High performance envelope Smaller heating & cooling loads Lower ventilation rates and fan power reduction strategies Greater energy efficiency of the heat recovery device Better performance of the cooling system Carbon emissions 61% lower than ASHRAE 90.1 Energy Cost 57% better than ASHRAE 90.1 - 9 LEED Points
Title page – please note partners.Cohos is Prime Consultant, BP+W is architecture and sustainability consultant
Thoughts: programmatic drivers for IT at UCInstruction and Learning including Library (dispersed)Research applications (concentrated)Enterprise systems including Finance, HR and FM (both)Resource requirements Hardware: ~35,000 user computers in UC population, hundreds of servers, five major machine rooms, dozens of small ones. Connectivity – high speed, wireless, 7/24/365, remote campuses and field sitesEnergy (the real greening)Power inHeat outSources of Power – total consumption and emissions, CO2 productionLongevity and End-of-Life – the greenest computer is the one you already own, cascading and recycling
Other projects of note:Child Development Centre (completed 2008)International House (opening September 2009)Phase 6 residence (opening 2010/11)Heating Plant upgrade (later in this presentation)Projects in development:Engineering complex upgrade and expansionMLT / MLB re-purposingScience A upgrades (post EEEL)
Interior of theatre.
Double height space, third floor. Lateral social stair to fourth floor, casual area against south west facing windows.
Quieter work areas at ends of long axes – existing spaces on campus very popular.
Thank you Jon and good afternoon. In my portion of our presentation I will be addressing the engineering systems and sustainability aspects of the project. I will give you an overview of the HVAC, water and lighting systems in the building, I will report on our projected energy and water savings and will finish up with the current LEED scorecard. A logical starting point for our discussion is with the system design goals. The goals listed here are not particularly original or new but they are all relevant to the project. LIST WRT the building systems I would like to start with a few brief comments on the building envelope. Any effort to design an energy efficient building MUST start with the envelope. The better the envelope, the smaller the loads, the smaller the systems and the less energy they consume. To properly design the building envelope one needs to understand the local climate and there are many aspects to climate. By way of example, and picking up on a significant aspect of Calgary’s climate, the chart in the lower left is a plot of the heating & cooling degree-days for Calgary. Degree days are an indicator of the annual heating & cooling requirements for any building. Heating are the pink & red lines below the O axis, cooling the blue lines above the O axis. As you can see, Calgary is a very heavily heating dominated climate. As a result of this reality, the design of an energy efficient building in Calgary must begin by a serious effort to minimize heat losses and in this regard glazing is a significant weak link in the chain. On the EEEL project glazing received the attention it deserves, but rarely gets, and this was primarily due to the initiative of the design team. The entire project is triple glazed – this is a major move in reducing the energy use of the building for its entire life. In addition, to reduce the cooling loads we do get in our relatively short summers, the building features extensive sun shades. The shades are horizontal, vertical, and angled as appropriate and on the South façade are moveable to track the sun.
On the cooling side of things our chiller plant is fairly new and we are currently in the process of replacing our oldest chiller, #4. The issue we have wrt chilled water is that we are approaching our maximum capacity with the current building program. So while the EEEL building is connected to the central plant, the cooling system also includes an indirect evaporative cooling tower and chilled water thermal storage tank. This system represents the first time we have put remote cooling equipment in a major building. It is in effect a pilot project to verify this approach as one means of cooling future buildings when we do run out of central plant chilled water. The reason we need to look at such remote systems is that our central plant chillers are cooled by river water from a nearby river, we do not use cooling towers at the central plant. The water we take from the river is under a provincial license and we are close to using maximum annual volume available to us. We are not able to add new chillers & cooling towers as the plant is directly across the street from single family homes. And so an efficient in-building approach to cooling is something we must develop as we look to the future. Those of you who know something about cooling systems may have noticed that the proposed in-building system for EEEL does not include a chiller, just a cooling tower & storage tank. Such a system is possible in Calgary because of our very high diurnal temperature swings, we are at a 3000’ elevation and even in summer temperatures get quite cool overnight. The concept therefore is that the building cooling tower will generate chilled water overnight. The chilled water generated will be stored in the tank for use during the day. The storage tank is designed as a thermally stratified tank in which the colder unused water and warmer used water stratify into thermally separate layers as a result of density differences. There is no barrier or membrane in the tank to separate the water streams. Both the in-building and central plant cooling connections are metered and we will be able, over time, to analyze the contributions each makes to the building.
With respect to energy performance, the building is predicted to operate at an energy use of 48% better than ASHRAE 90.1. This represents a carbon emission reduction of 61%, an energy cost reduction of 57% and 9 LEED energy points out of 10. The chart shown in the upper right illustrates some of the points I made previously. Heating is a major energy use for us and we have made a significant reduction there. Cooling while important, is not a major energy use. And finally, our strategy of decoupling the heating and cooling systems has allowed us to significantly reduce fan energy use.