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Achieving Energy Performance in spite of complex systems and dis-jointed design
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Date
2012
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Energy Systems Laboratory (http://esl.tamu.edu)
Texas A&M University (http://www.tamu.edu)
Texas A&M University (http://www.tamu.edu)
Abstract
The extensively refurbished heritage government department office building in Canberra's
Parliamentary circle, has managed to achieve its target energy performance levels contrary to
expectations following difficult design and construction processes, through careful and
thorough commissioning and tuning.
The existing two storey 5,000m2 sandstone building was completely gutted and brought to a
new life as a head office for one of Australia's federal government departments. The building
was stripped back to a bare shell, before being re-created to a Grade A office with numerous
tenant systems, including a 125kW data centre with a series of complex multi-layered alarm
and protection systems.
Given the extent of incomplete or contradictory designs, the commissioning team needed to
carry out substantial planning, coordination and framing of test scenarios in order to bring all
issues to a close, all the while being cognisant of the final desired energy performance
outcome and close scrutiny by the Tenant representative of all commissioning planning and
witness testing.
This paper presents an overview of the challenges that needed to resolved during the course
of the commissioning and tuning processes to achieve/maintain the target energy
performance outcome (4.5 Stars NABERS - approximately 70-75kg/CO2e/m2/year) after 12
months of occupation and operation. In order to aid understanding, we have assessed the
procedures and steps taken against the Soft landings guidelines and core principles.
Description
Keywords
Commissioning, Energy performance, Heritage, Refurbishment, Tuning.