San Francisco Federal Building — Natural Vent Strategies

Motivation / Problem Statement

Lack of design/analysis tools for naturally ventilated large commercial buildings.

Activities / Approach

Use EnergyPlus to select natural ventilation system and inform envelope design, use EnergyPlus and CFD design control strategy, use EnergyPlus to pre-commission control system.

Accomplishments / Outcomes

Identified simple NV system — $1.5M savings; pre-commissioning of controls allowed programming problems to be identified and fixed well before occupancy.

Future / Follow-on

Performance monitoring, model validation?

Relationship to Other Projects

Low Energy Cooling, Building Controls Virtual Test Bed

Principal Investigator

• Philip Haves
• (510) 486-6512
• with

• Peng Xu
• (510) 486-4549

• Dimitri Curtil

• CERC San Diego