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Sustainability Assessment of the Robert E. Johnson State Office Building, Final Report, Revised April 2002
Abstract
The Robert E. Johnson State (REJ) Office building is a 5-story, 303,389 square foot office building for state legislative support staff, including Legislative House Committees, Legislative Council, State Auditor, the Legislative Reference Library, the Senate Print Shop, and the Sunset Commission. Overall, the building is divided into three sections with divisions created by a ground-level breezeway and vehicular access area, which are covered by the upper floors above these areas. The building’s northern facade is approximately 14 degrees west of north, exposing it to direct sunlight during the late afternoon hours in the winter. It is also important to note that the building contains over 50% glazing in the façade consisting of two types of energy efficient, low-E glazing. Deciduous trees shade a large portion of the south façade up to the 3rd level.
Description
To analyze the sustainability of the Robert E. Johnson Building, this study: 1) measured the hourly energy use of the building’s heating, cooling, and electrical systems, 2) created a calibrated energy simulation matched to the whole-building energy consumption of the as-built, energy efficient building, 3) measured the performance of selected Energy Conservation Measures (ECMs) using the calibrated simulation program, and 4) compared the annual energy consumption of the Robert E. Johnson building with selected state buildings in the LoanSTAR database. For this research, the following Energy Conserving Measures were studied: 1) an energy efficient HVAC system, 2) high efficiency chillers, 3) T-8 fluorescent lamps with electronic ballasts, 4) motion sensors for lighting control, and 5) low-E window glazing. ECMs that were identified but not studied in this report include: electrical savings due to daylighting, an enthalpyheat recovery system on the Senate print shop, an outside-air, preconditioning system that contained special-purpose dehumidification equipment, low-head pumping in the over-sized cooling towers, variable-speed pumping in the chilled water loop, a high albedo roof, and several other measures.Subject
Robert E. Johnson State Office buildingenergy efficiency
Low-E Glazing
sustainability
energy simulation
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Citation
Sylvester, K. E.; Song, S.; Haberl, J. S.; Turner, W. D. (2002). Sustainability Assessment of the Robert E. Johnson State Office Building, Final Report, Revised April 2002. Energy Systems Laboratory (http://esl.tamu.edu), Texas A&M University. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /2028.