ASHRAE 90.1 Web App

ASHRAE 90.1 (Energy Standard for Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings) is a United States standard that provides minimum requirements for energy efficient designs for buildings except for low-rise residential buildings. Percent improvement over ASHRAE 90.1 is the basis for awarding energy points within the LEED rating system. In addition, many states apply ASHRAE 90.1 to buildings being constructed or under renovation.

There are 2 methods of complying with ASHRAE 90.1: the prescriptive and performance paths. The prescriptive path requires that all components of the building meet the minimum standards specified by ASHRAE 90.1. The performance path involves modeling the proposed building design and demonstrating (through building energy simulation) that it uses less energy than a baseline building built to ASHRAE 90.1 specifications. In the performance path approach, a baseline Energy Cost Budget (ECB) is established, based on the building size and program.

Section 11 of Standard 90.1 describes the ECB Method, an alternative approach to demonstrating compliance of a building design with Standard 90.1. Compliance with Section 11 is described in detail in Section 11.1.4 of the standard. With the ECB Method, a computer program is used to calculate the design energy cost for the proposed building design and to calculate the energy cost budget for a budget building design. In the budget building design, which is a variant of the proposed building design, all mandatory and prescriptive requirements of the Standard are applied. In other words, the energy cost budget represents the building as if it complied with the Standard. The design energy cost for the proposed design cannot exceed the energy cost budget. (Note: The energy cost budget and the design energy cost calculations are applicable only for determining compliance with ANSI/ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.1-2010. They are not predictions of actual energy consumption or costs of the proposed design after construction. Actual experience will differ from these calculations due to variations such as occupancy, building operation and maintenance, weather, energy use not covered by this standard, changes in energy rates between design of the building and occupancy, and precision of the calculation tool.)

Usable with desktop, tablet, or other mobile devices, the ASHRAE 90.1 web application allows you to input your project parameters and then calculate your proposed design’s projected performance and compliance with Standard 90.1 using the Energy Cost Budget (ECB) Method described in the standard. You can output your results in Microsoft® Excel® for your clients and project records. It also allows you to set up an account and store your project information for easy reference and possible future benchmarking.

You can view it here on the web.

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