HVAC design considerations for energy efficiency in commercial buildings

Energy efficiency in Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning of commercial buildings is now a priority of investors and regulatory authorities, which has now opened doors for the designers to create efficient HVAC designs by considering a lot of factors like completely understanding the building architecture and requirements in coordination with the project team, considering building orientation, glazing and its effect on building HVAC loads, creating and planning efficient design strategies a top goal at the stage of load calculations and by comparing results, implementing the most effective one etc. At the stage of HVAC load calculation, an engineer can play his pivotal role in producing an energy efficient HVAC design and this paper mainly focus on those factors, which an HVAC Engineer must address before finalizing HVAC load calculation. First and foremost requirement of HVAC is to get all the necessary details for HVAC load calculations from the building Architect and plan an energy efficiency strategy for HVAC design. HVAC Engineer must be able to convince building Architect with his calculations to alter a few building specifications, which results in considerably low HVAC loads as compared to the original design without changing/ damaging building aesthetics. The coordination with the building Architect at this phase is very important because it would not only lead to efficient design but also result in low running cost. In this research paper, a sample commercial building would be taken as a case study and different design strategies would be implemented at the load calculation phase and the summary of results would be shared along with the required inputs/ strategies which may include the following techniques but not limited to lowering building envelope thermal loads, changing building operating profiles in terms of lighting, equipment and people, effective zoning, fresh air requirements, input variation in terms of climate data, fenestrations etc. All these factors with suitable techniques and coordination would lead to reduction in resource depletion. Thus, resulting in energy efficiency without affecting occupants comfort and the building requirements.