Buildings standard’s continue to evolve both at national, state and local levels. These standards help set the direction for future building design to help improve efficiency, safety and reliability.
ASHRAE is a leading set of national standards. Where in the 90.1 standard the incorporation of renewable generation as a new minimum prescriptive requirement for on-site renewables on new buildings and the addition is expected to be included in the base 90.1 standard in 2022. Essentially this revision is a major shift from consideration of renewables as beyond the base standard. The is new requirement is that the building or building site must provide on-site renewable energy systems with capacity of 0.25 W/ft2 (0.85 Btu/ft2) multiplied by the sum of the conditioned floor area of up to the 3 largest floors. Consideration of was given to Non-onsite renewables but is beyond the scope of the 90.1 standard that cover the building only. Once this standard is implemented the ability for the grid to host the increasing level of renewable generation becomes more important.
In addition, the ASHRAE working groups are looking into standards around energy storage and buildkng to grid for future incorporation.
At the local level recently the city of San Francisco implemented a standard for new buildings to be all electric, I.e. no gas. The ordinance will apply to more than 54,000 homes and 32 million square feet of commercial space in the city’s development pipeline. This requirement will certainly help the state and city meet it’s clean goals, however an all electric building will likely increase the electric load that needs to be supplied by the grid, making building To grid collaboration all the more important.
Of course there are many other similar standard developments taking place around the country and internationally. The key point is that as these standards continue to evolve building to grid considerations and factors become more important.
David Lovelady
Founder of LovEnergy
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