ASHRAE Accepting Public Comments on Proposed ANSI Standard on Energy Efficient Design of Low Rise Residential Buildings ANSI/RESNET/ICC Standard 301 Defines Performance Requirements

The American Society of Heating, Refrigeration and Air Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) has released a draft ANSI Standard “BSR/ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.2-2007R, Energy Efficient Design of Low-Rise Residential Buildings” for public review and comment.

According to ASHRAE:

This proposed revision of ASHRAE Standard 90.2-2007 represents a new approach in residential building energy performance. This new 90.2 seeks to deliver residential building energy performance that is at least 50% more efficient than the energy efficiency defined by the 2006 IECC. Key to accomplishing this objective is delivery of an accurate, flexible performance-based tool to enable user creativity in meeting the performance objectives. The new standard contains detailed rules governing the energy modeling and analyses necessary to determine compliance with the performance objectives of this new Standard.  While not part of this document SSPC 90.2 has included an overview of the rule set as a related document in the online comment database.  This Standard provides a mechanism by which any residential building design can be easily evaluated against these performance objectives. By establishing a clearly-defined rules set for energy performance modeling, users such as home builders, can easily assess various designs, material options, orientations and other variables to evaluate predicted energy performance. This analytical flexibility also enables users such as utilities and beyond-code program developers to have a reliable and repeatable tool for helping to establish program targets as well as to help ensure program compliance. While this Standard focuses on “performance” as the primary objective, it does include some system level minimum prescriptive provisions of performance. These minimum provisions are provided to ensure compliance and to protect against analytical gaming.

The performance requirements of the proposed standard are based on the Energy Rating Index defined by ANSI/RESNET/ICC Standard 301.

The proposed maximum Energy Rating Index scores called for in the standard are:

The proposed standard is posted at BSR/ASHRAE/IES Standard 90.2-2007R, Energy Efficient Design of Low-Rise Residential Buildings

ASHRAE is accepting comments on the proposed standard.  To submit comments go to ASHRAE Online Public Comment Form

Public comments on the proposed standard are open until December 4, 2016.