ASHRAE Releases Energy Standard 90.1-2013

Standard 90.1-2013 Nearly 50 Percent More Efficient than 2004 Standard

ATLANTA — Major changes to requirements regarding building envelope, lighting, mechanical systems, and the energy cost budget are contained in the newly published energy standard from ASHRAE and IES.

ANSI/ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.1-2013, ”Energy Standard for Buildings Except Low-Rise Residential Buildings,” incorporates 110 addenda, reflecting changes made through the public review process. Appendix F gives brief descriptions and publication dates of the addenda to 90.1-2010 reflected in this new edition.

“While many things have changed since the first version of Standard 90 was published in 1975, the need to reduce building energy use and cost has not,” said Steve Skalko, chair of the committee that wrote the 2013 standard. “This standard represents many advances over the 2010 standard, as we worked toward our goal of making the standard 40-50 percent more stringent than the 2004 standard.”

Rita Harrold, director of technology for the Illuminating Engineering Society of North America, said achieving the stringency goals established for the 2013 standard presented a challenge in reducing the requirements for lighting.

“While interior lighting power densities (LPD) were reevaluated and most lowered, there continues to be an ongoing concern about maintaining quality of lighting installations for occupant satisfaction and comfort while achieving energy savings,” Harrold said. “The focus in the 2013 standard, therefore, was not just on lowering LPDs, but on finding ways to achieve savings by adding more controls and daylighting requirements as well as including lighting limits for exterior applications based on jurisdictional zoning.”

The most significant changes, ASHRAE reps said, are building envelope, lighting, mechanical systems, energy cost budget, and modeling.

Another important change for the 2013 standard is the first alternate compliance path in Chapter 6. Section 6.6 was added to the 2010 edition to provide a location for alternate methods of compliance with the standard. The first such alternate path has been developed for computer room systems and was formulated with the assistance of ASHRAE technical committee 9.9, Mission Critical Facilities, Data Centers, Technology Spaces, and Electronic Equipment. This path uses the power usage effectiveness (PUE) metric established by the datacom industry. This alternate efficiency path format provides a framework that could be considered for other energy using facets of buildings not easily covered in the prescriptive provisions of the standard.

Also new to the standard are requirements for operating escalators and moving walkways at minimum speed per ASME A17.1 when not conveying passengers.

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