While buildings smaller than 50,000 sq ft account for nearly half of the energy used in US commercial buildings, energy efficiency programs to-date have primarily focused on larger buildings. Interviews with stakeholders and a review of the literature indicate interest in energy efficiency from the small commercial building sector, provided solutions are simple and low-cost. An approach to deliver energy management to small commercial buildings via HVAC contractors and preliminary demonstration findings are presented. The energy management package (EMP) developed includes five technical elements: benchmarking and analysis of monthly energy use; analysis of interval electricity data (if available), a one-hour onsite walkthrough, communication with the building owner, and checking of results. This data-driven approach tracks performance and identifies low-cost opportunities, using guidelines and worksheets for each element to streamline the delivery process and minimize the formal training required. This energy management approach is unique from, but often complementary to conventional quality maintenance or retrofit-focused programs targeting the small commercial segment. Because HVAC contractors already serve these clients, the transaction cost to market and deliver energy management services can be reduced to the order of hundreds of dollars per year. This business model, outlined briefly in this report, enables the offering to benefit the contractor and client even at the modest expected energy savings in small buildings. Results from a small-scale pilot of this approach validated that the EMP could be delivered by contractors in 4-8 hours per building per year, and that energy savings of 3-5percent are feasible through this approach.

AbstractThe standard blower door test methods, such as ASTM E779, describe how to use a single blower door to determine the total leakage of a single-zone structure such as a detached single-family home. There are no standard test methods for measuring interzonal leakage in a two-zone or multi-zone building envelope such as might be encountered in with an attached garage or in a multifamily building. Some practitioners have been using techniques that involve making multiple measurements with a single blower door as well as combined measurements using multiple blower doors. Even for just two zones there are dozens of combinations of one-door and two-door test protocols that could conceivably be used to determine the interzonal air tightness. We examined many of these two-zone configurations using both simulation and measured data to estimate the accuracy and precision of each technique for realistic measurement scenarios. We also considered the impact of taking measurements at a single pressure versus over multiple pressures. We compared the various techniques and evaluated them for specific uses. Some techniques work better in one leakage regime; some are more sensitive to wind and other noise; some are more suited to determining only a subset of the leakage values. This paper makes recommendations on which techniques to use or not use for various cases and provides data that could be used to develop future test methods.

Although buildings smaller than 4,645 m2 account for nearly half of the energy used in U.S. commercial buildings, energy-efficiency programs to date have primarily focused on larger buildings. Stakeholder interviews conducted during a scoping study by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) indicated interest in energy efficiency from the small commercial building sector, provided solutions are simple and of low cost. To address this need, an energy management package (EMP) was developed to deliver energy management to small commercial buildings via HVAC contractors, because they already serve these clients and the transaction cost to market would be reduced. This energy-management approach is unique from, but often complementary to, conventional quality maintenance or retrofit-focused programs targeting the small commercial segment. This paper presents an overview of the EMP, the business model to deliver it, and preliminary demonstration findings from a pilot use of the EMP. Results from the pilot validated that contractors could deliver the EMP in 4-8 h per building per year and that energy savings of 3-5% are feasible through this approach.