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Option Pilot: Any Insight?

We have an interesting situation in that from June 2010 – August 2011, we had a fuel cell pilot on our building. We had to have a gas meter installed specifically to feed this fuel cell. The gas meter is still on our building, but is inactive. As interpreted, in order to comply with the Option 3 Pilot, we would need to have both the performance period and baseline periods take place in the past five years, meaning that we would have to include some portion of the time period that the fuel cell was on the building. It would not be possible to start a Performance Period before August 2012. The Option states the following: “Confirm Energy meter(s) that measured the entire energy use of the project building have been in place from the start of the baseline period, and that this was the data used to establish the project building's energy efficiency performance.” How would our unique situation be treated? The gas meter was installed in what would be the middle of our third year of data, but it was for a specific purpose: to pilot a new energy technology. If the gas meter is included for the time that it is active, would this affect our ability to move forward with this Option?

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Marcus Sheffer
LEED Fellow
7group / Energy Opportunities
LEEDuser Expert
4454 thumbs up

Thu, 03/15/2012 - 13:41

Hi Elizabeth, How does the fuel cell affect the results? Since the measurement is made on Source EUI I would assume that it lowers the energy use (fuel cell uses gas to make electric so more gas use and less electric use should increase source EUI). Is that the case? I think that this could probably be one of the adjustments that you would make to normalize the data similar to a change in occupancy or schedule. Portfolio Manager can't do that so you would have to take the data outside of it to make the adjustment. There is no way to know for sure without signing up for the pilot credit. In order to do so you will need to register the project. Then sign up for the pilot and you can ask these questions directly to those who will be deciding how to handle your situation. There is a pilot credit forum in LEED User and hopefully they add this one to the list and we can take our discussions over there.

Thu, 03/15/2012 - 20:50

Hi Marcus, We've set up several meters in Portfolio Manager (PM): 1 for the gas, 1 for the fuel cell output, and our main meter (general electricity, supplies the whole building). As I am sure you know, meters can be active or inactive. If we "turn on" both the gas meter data and fuel cell output data, that seems to be the most accurate scenario in terms of what we actually consumed at that time. But we cannot accurately account for the fuel cell because PM has no option for fuel cells like they do for solar and wind. We've discussed this issue with the folks at Energy Star and other than that they are working on including more forms of alternative energy, that issue is probably neither here nor there for our project. The fuel cell did certainly help our environmental impact, but in terms of what we consumed during that time, I am thinking it makes the most sense to include the meters for both the gas and the fuel cell to get the most accurate, fair picture of what our foot print actually was, despite the inherent flaws in PM?

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