Benchmarking the energy efficiency of office buildings in Belo Horizonte, Brazil

Syracuse, NY

In countries in which energy efficiency regulations are already consolidated or in the process of being consolidated, an important parameter to be verified is the relative consumption of electric energy of existing buildings in accordance with established ranges of consumption for different types of buildings. In the present paper ISO 52003-1 methodology was applied to create a benchmarking for office buildings for the city of Belo Horizonte, Brazil and the work discusses the implications of using the standard’s methodology for the Brazilian scenario. To fulfill this objective, it was necessary to gather electric energy consumption data for this type of buildings as well to survey for building constructive data. For the classification of buildings according to their consumption, a methodology was developed to isolate the annual consumption per area of the towers from EUI data for the whole building. Besides, information such as garages existence, lighting power density of the garages and the number of lifts was collected in loco as in many cases there was not access to the building projects. The results showed that due to the large variation in consumption data, the use of the average EUI instead of the median EUI value results in a better distribution for the towers energy consumption classification. This precaution can prevent excessive resistance in the market if a public benchmarking policy is stablished. Therefore, it´s concluded that the understanding of the consumption of electrical energy of the buildings plays a fundamental role in the establishment of goals for the new buildings.

https://surface.syr.edu/ibpc/2018/HF1/2