Trial / Demo
Energy consultants, True Energy Solutions (TES), used the IES Virtual Environment (IESVE) to help design the first BREEAM Excellent building in the Baltic region.
Place Eleven is a 14-storey-high Class A office building with restaurant. The total area of the building is 24 000 m2, with 14 500 m2 of available office space.
Using IESVE, TES consultants carried out extensive energy and daylight modelling to inform design decisions and enable them to advise on the best sustainable design measures for this multi-storey office building in Latvia’s capital city.
Early evaluation of daylight levels influenced the size of the windows to ensure they met BREEAM requirements on uniformity, whilst energy and daylight simulations influenced glass properties to achieve a higher than average daylight factor, exceeding BREEAM requirements (varies floor to floor from 2.2% to 2.9% with BREEAM requirements of 2.1%).
The building lighting system was designed with DALI (Digital Addressable Lighting Interface) protocol for full control and daylight dimming, equating to approximately 20% energy savings compared to a system with no photocell, which was estimated using the IESVE simulation.
Parametric simulations using the IESVE allowed TES to suggest the optimal solution for the building envelope, and early stage “simple box” energy simulations justified the selection of variable refrigerant flow with a heat recovery system for building cooling and heating.
The energy model predicted cost and energy savings due to designed demand control ventilation (DCV) for office spaces, which will optimise energy consumption especially for mobile workspace concept businesses.
Predicting an overall energy saving of 70% in end-use regulated energy consumption compared to ASHRAE 90.1-2010 baseline, the building gained 14 out of 15 available BREEAM points for energy efficiency and won first place in the nomination for The Most Sustainable Project in Latvia 2015.
TES consultants have planned a level 2 ASHRAE energy audit after 1 year of operation to evaluate and address the Performance Gap.
“The Virtual Environment provides us with detailed accurate metrics, enabling us to find the best solutions to optimise the performance and energy efficiency of a building. I would absolutely recommend IESVE to other consultants. I do not know of any other products that can provide the same level of detailed analytics that the IESVE can.”
Inga Valuntiene, Chief Operating Officer
Real build images are courtesy of Hanner Group.
