Creating a Synergistic Energy Saving Environment Through a Demand Side Management Program

Prasad Vaidya, David Eijadi, Tom McDougall, and Jay Johnson, The Weidt Group

Keywords

Abstract

In 1993 an energy design assistance service (Energy Assets) was introduced in Minnesota that engineered rapid social changes towards energy efficiency through integrated building design. The program achieves success in altering traditional design team synergies by providing new information to designers and owners early in the design through a credible process and by following up with an implementation-verification procedure. For each
building, approximately 70 alternative strategies are evaluated without compromising the design aesthetics.

By early 2001, the program had addressed over 31 million square feet, an average energy savings of 28% compared to the local energy code, and with an estimated annual savings of $12.4 million in operating energy costs and reduction of 46 peak Megawatts. The Energy Assets process is now standard practice for many design firms, with a steady acceleration in the number of buildings served by the program. Through repeated interaction with the program, the design and client communities have also improved their baseline designs.

In this paper:

We summarize the extent of market penetration by Energy Assets and the diversity of savings achieved by the program.
We argue that the diversity of savings has been achieved due to the whole building analysis for energy conservation.
We demonstrate the changes effected by Energy Assets in the design community by looking at trends in initial design savings, final savings, and incremental costs of selected strategy bundles, across the first eight years and 115 completed building projects.