
ACG Member Brian Venn, TBE, CxA is co-presenting a CSE Website: HVAC: Balancing Ventilation and Energy Use
ACG Member Brian Venn, TBE, CxA is co-presenting a CSE Website: HVAC: Balancing Ventilation and Energy Use
There are many factors to consider when choosing and designing HVAC systems for buildings. Those decisions ultimately influence how energy-efficient the building is. The major factors to optimize for energy efficiency are ventilation, zone control, heat recovery and operations.
HVAC equipment exists to fulfill two goals: ventilation and comfort conditioning. To accomplish those two goals, a certain amount of energy has to be expended, but the goal of an efficient HVAC system is to minimize the energy input to do it. Ventilation in hot, humid and cold climates is one of the largest loads on HVAC systems.
The integration of high-performance HVAC design strategies can have as large an impact on energy use as specifying high energy efficiency ratings.
Well-designed heating, cooling and ventilation energy-recovery systems are able to maintain a building’s proper temperature and air quality while minimizing energy loss. The type of system to use varies depending on the application, but the most common is ventilation energy recovery.
The ASHRAE Standard 62.1: Ventilation for Acceptable Indoor Air Quality Indoor Air Quality Procedure combined with air-cleaning technology can also be used to reduce the require amount of ventilation. This allows for reducing energy, peak loads and equipment first cost without sacrificing indoor air quality.