How to Meet Your 2030 Challenge Goals with Revit and Insight 360.

AARON KETNER: All right, everyone. I think we're going to get it started here. It's nice to see you guys here. Thanks for coming.

Our session today, we're going to be going over on how we implement and meet Architecture 2030 goals. And so if at any point during the presentation you guys have any questions, feel free to tweet at us. iamketner, and Luc is lucwinginit. And our office is dpsdesigns.

Be sure to use the hashtags here. This way everybody can be involved, and can see the full conversation. and we'll try to answer your questions as soon as possible after the presentation. And with that we're going to start.

So I am Aaron Ketner. This is part of our building performance analysis team at Dekker/Perich/Sabatini. I'm an intern architect and energy specialist. I'm a WELL AP and LEED Green Associate.

LUC WING: Hi, everybody. My name's Luke Wing. I'm a building analyst and a design technology leader, and also a certified Revit professional. And over here in the corner we have one of our fearless leaders, Brandon Garrett. He's an associate and design technology leader as well. You can go ahead and get his Twitter handle right there at architectfx, and you can tweet him all your wonderful questions as well.

So in today's session we're going to go over who we are and where we come from-- very briefly I promise. And then what is the 2030 challenge? And by a show of hands, how many of you guys are aware of the 2030 challenge? How many guys are signed up and actually go ahead and implementing these steps? Perfect. So hopefully we can clear up some muddy waters for you guys, and get this streamlined for you pretty quickly.

So we'll start off with how it all begins. We'll talk about our building performance analysis tool belt and capabilities. We'll talk about the total environmental impact some of these decisions have. And then we'll also try to educate you guys on spreading awareness, and how to create these forums, and streamline communication with your design teams. And at the very end, we'll go over a couple of case studies, and eventually talking about one of our buildings that achieved the 2030 challenge.

So these are our three founding principals-- Dale Dekker, Steve Perich, and Bill Sabatini. Without these guys buying into it, and selling these guys the idea, and them completely taking it, we wouldn't be here today be able to tell you guys all this wonderful information. So that's the first step.

But we're a multi-disciplinary firm. We do architecture, landscape architecture, interior design, urban planning, structural engineering.

AARON KETNER: And so let's get into the 2030 challenge. It started in New Mexico. A few you may know him-- Edward Mazria. He's an architect out of Santa Fe. In the early 2000s he helped establish this global initiative.

And it's pretty simple. It's straightforward. So the goal is that by the year 2030 we achieve carbon neutrality-- also known as net zero buildings. And that's using zero fossil fuel energy. Today, we're currently at the benchmark of 70% reduction in fossil fuel energy. And so every five years it gets increasingly closer to the 100% reduction. So by 2020, it's 80%; and in 2025 we have 90%.

And so when comparing the Architecture 2030 challenge with the AIA 2030, the 2030 is a global initiative. It's basically guidelines to follow, and set a path for offices all over the world to achieve this net zero goal.

But locally, in the United States, the AIA has established a national commitment. This is something that you can sign up for and report actively, too. And that way we can keep track, keep a database of how our buildings are improving from state to state.

So how it all begins. We start off by signing a letter. This is when the office establishes themselves within the commitment. And they can start pursuing the next step, which is designating a leader.

In our office, it's Aimee Smith. She's a lead AP, an intern architect, and the office sustainability specialist. It was her goal to create four action item lists to implement in the office within six months of signing, and to develop a sustainability action plan within the office.

These are things locally within the office-- for instance improving the recycling system. We went around, and every office pod gets a little recycling bin to help promote recycling. We start advertising reduction of water within the office, and pulling blinds whenever there's a lot of solar heat gain and so on. So providing education within the office.

This is all internal. And you can see that over here. So the internal.

And then its counterpart is the external. These are things that are going beyond. This is the projects coming out of our office. So we start implementing energy modeling and reporting at year 1. And the reporting is what the AIA 2030 is really strong at conveying, is being a source for everyone across the nation to see how they are doing compared to other offices in the same state.

LUC WING: So this probably looks pretty familiar to you guys. This is pretty standard workflow. The project team will design and keep developing a project. And then they'll inquire some outside consultant, or in-house energy specialist, to go ahead and run a EUI, and start getting results. But this causes a lot of backtracking and reworking, which is a waste of time and money, because we all know energy models aren't complex as far as geometry goes, but they're very complex and rich in data. So we have to go back and do a lot of reworking and cleaning up at the beginning.

So we are proposing a new integrated workflow, where the building performance analysis team, its path is right here. And then in the grays is the design team path. And we're meeting up at each phase at the SD level, DD level, CD, and then for closeout. And what we're trying to do at this is integrate these design decisions and strategies as early as possible for allowing things like the budget, and owner education as well.

AARON KETNER: So we looked at three different strategies to try and achieve this challenge. Where the largest energy reductions can be achieved is in the design strategies. This is purely on how you design the building, before we even get to active systems. And so these are things like finding optimum massing, orientation. Much of our analysis that we'll be showing you today is involved in this strategy.

The next step, after we reduce the demand of the building, basically, we can look to technologies and systems. These can be things on site, like integrated photovoltaic panels in this case, or even just like a carport shading system to shade vehicles as well.

And then the last category, which we can obtain a maximum of 20% reduction in fossil fuel demand, is from off-site renewable energy. A lot of people know these as RECs-- Renewable Energy Certificates-- that you can purchase. And we'll get into design strategies first.

This is the average breakdown for each of the strategies, taking advantage of the 20% off-site renewable energy certificates. The average reduction in design strategies is about 48%. And then that leaves about 32% to be made up from renewable systems, and the technologies and systems.

LUC WING: So we'll go over our tool belt and capabilities real quick, and how we start to understand these buildings' energy use. First off, we benchmark an EUI. EUI stands for Energy Use Intensity. We start off with Insight, FormIt, and Revit-- our three tools.

Then we do a solar insolation-- which, this is spelled correct. We're talking about insolation, not insulation. We have a daylight illuminance study, solar irradiance study, and a renewable energy study all utilizing Revit. And then we have a little extra software over here to help us get some financial reports out of the PV energy.

We also do interior day lighting, building envelope heat transfer. This is a free software online by the National Science Foundation. It's called Energy2D. Wonderful software. And then we also utilize flow design to put our sites and buildings in the wind tunnel.

AARON KETNER: So this is the breakdown that we hand out to the office. Our hook is this EUI benchmark analysis. This is stuff that we include, and we try to integrate through every decision. And then that allows us to see opportunities to pursue other various forms of analysis.

We might find an opportunity for studying building envelope transfer analysis. This way, the project team early on can kind of see what's involved with each. And we break those down for you today. All of this can be found. Basically our presentation is pretty much also conveyed to our office through our capabilities overview document.

This is an example of what we can hand out. This way we're not receiving hundreds of questions every day. Everyone can kind of, in their own time, go and start educating themselves as they go through our capabilities document.

And this way we hope to prevent road signs like this. We don't want to start off on the wrong path. So our analysis and our new workflow, we're trying to mitigate that kind of road sign, and begin an easy transformation into net zero.

We do this, starting off in the design [INAUDIBLE] We do this with the design team. We figure out what the site is, and we bring to the table some various building shapes and sizes and orientations. So that way, whenever they start bringing their own priorities to the site-- like site access, visual access, things that are very important to the client and the project itself-- we can start testing these various forms of masses right away. And that can be one of the decision makers as well.

So along with those other priorities, energy is now starting to come into the equation. That way as the [INAUDIBLE] advances, we can start creating and agreeing upon a final massing to move forward, as we enter schematic design.

LUC WING: All right. So once we've started off on the right path, we go ahead and we started looking at these masses in forms within Insight, to go ahead and start trying to start off with the lowest EUI possible, which not all the time is the case. What this allows us to do, though, is start studying the massing in a little bit more of a real world. We can start looking at the sizing, how the building's shading itself, orientation on site, and also how it affects other buildings-- or other buildings affect ours-- in the site.

So we go ahead and refine this. And then within Formit, we can do a quick study just to see how we're going, and how we're starting off. It allows us to do a solar insolation study as well. And so we can start seeing the intensity of the heat gain on the east face of the building. And then on the west, it's a little bit more shading itself. So we can start understanding and start planning for these strategies. Maybe we need scrim, or some internal blinds. But we can address these early on.

Once you like it, you can go ahead and apply the levels. And you can send us to Insight from here, and start really refining your systems. Or what we like to do is take it into Revit. And we like to get a little bit more detailed analysis.

So once you import your Formit model, you want to go ahead and apply walls and floors. Make it as realistic as possible. And then go ahead and start checking for tightness and holes in your model. You want to make sure your roofs are actual roofs, and walls are walls, and floors are floors.

And then you're going to go ahead and locate your project, and then get a weather file. Try to get something that's reliable-- maybe an airport near you, or something that you can trust. And then you want to go into your energy settings, and start looking through all these options you have.

First, these three right here are your major, these work controls, your EUI pretty much when it gets up to Insight. Your conceptual types and your schematic types could be early on. A lot less geometry.

You may not have defined wall assemblies yet. But you can go ahead and start applying or overriding these categories to start getting an accurate reading. Whereas the detailed elements, you check that box, you're going to start using the assemblies that are in your model. So if you have a wall assemblies model correctly with proper thermal values, you're going to get a proper analysis.

So we'll go ahead and take a look at this. In the roofs, you can override your categories. You're aiming for an R-38 roof. It doesn't have to be the exact roof assembly you're looking for. The R-value is the target here.

So you go through this list, and you can start really refining your assemblies, and start understanding how your building's going to perform once we send it up to Insight.

So you go ahead, take a look at that. And you want to check your energy model before you send it to Insight, and make sure that it's holistic and tight. You want your walls to be green. You want your floors and roofs to be blue. And you want shading to be gray. If your walls are coming in gray, you know you have a hole in your model, and you want to go take a look and try to clean that up. Otherwise you're going to get to an incorrect analysis.

So once we're in Insight, this is where the magic happens. This is where we can really start conveying to the design team on your strategies they're trying to implement. As you notice to the left, it's a high-energy gain-- or right here is the zero point. And they're saying that this energy drops and tapers off. But it's probably getting more expensive on the systems to the right. So you can see where it starts to taper off. That's when you're getting minimal gain for your buck.

So the triangle in the middle is your BIM setting. That's what we overrid in the original Revit model. And then we like to give it a range on either side to help just to understand occupancy behavior, because we can design how we want. But we all know occupants aren't going to open their windows at the correct time, or they'll leave lights on when they leave. So we can kind of gauge that.

What we're learning here, though, is we're starting to refine these systems and strategies early on. So we can understand where we want a high performing heat exchange system, where we want just a regular VAV from the ASHRAE baseline.

So we go ahead, and we start refining these. And we really set it. And we can go ahead and start seeing our EUI go down and down, and get lower and lower. Once we do that, we can check how much it costs in US dollars per square foot a year, or we can switch it back to the EUI.

AARON KETNER: So what is this EUI that we've been talking about? It stands for Energy Use Intensity. You can see here in the US we're using the kilo-BTUs. This is the energy unit. And we break it down to the square foot of the building and per year. This way we can compare the amount of energy per square foot per year against other buildings within the same building type.

And we take a look at the baseline EUI for the 2030 challenge. It uses CBECS. That's from the Commercial Buildings Energy Consumption Survey. And so it's based on a national average of current building infrastructure at the time of the survey. And you can see that in this case this is comparing education and banking financial services in a broader category. We get more specific in the primary function.

For instance, a college or university is about 130.7 EUI. And that way we're not comparing buildings in this building type against financial offices, for instance, which have a baseline of 67.3. We understand that building types require different things, and have different operating schedules. So therefore we keep them separated like this. So we answer schematic design. And the first step in the design strategy or strategies within the project.

So we establish more formal communication within the design team. There's examples of just forms that we have. I just threw them up here. And this is key, because we can archive information that only needs to be asked once; or say a new person comes onto the design team, they can reference things that we've already talked about, or things that we've already laid out as far as our values we're trying to pursue, and so on. So that way we're not wasting anyone's time. And every bit of information that is involved with our analysis is easy to access and documented.

This is an example deliverable of the EUI analysis. You don't have to read the text. We just like to show that we provide a brief description with our graphics. That way they're not just standalone.

We try to package them. We create these templates like this. So every project-- for instance, we use InDesign-- we just have to place the new graphics, provide any additional summaries that are needed, and streamline this communication process within the office-- and even to the client. You often see our design team handing these off to the client, and trying to educate them as well.

And so with these graphics we often like to provide a couple of widgets from Insight. We like this show that we are looking in the proper area. For instance, this is wall construction in the curve. So the lower R-values, you can see where that starts to taper off, where you might be spending more money but not gaining any advantage or reduction in EUI. So we can hit that sweet spot.

We can start also communicating with mechanical engineers, and figuring out is advancing to a little bit more expensive of a system, will that have a larger impact on the EUI? Or is it going to be just not too big of a change? So you can see here, there is a pretty large drop in the typical systems versus high-efficiency systems. So we went forward with trying to pursue a really high efficient system for this building.

The dial, you'll see this pop up a lot. This is from Insight. It goes from if you're above the ASHRAE 90.1 baseline, it's red and has a frowny face. And then as you dip under the ASHRAE 90.1 baseline, it turns orange. And then when you achieve 2030, it celebrates with a little happy face and turns green.

And so we also can see on a scale how far away we are from the baseline-- the 90.1-- and how far away the Architecture 2030 goal is for this project. So quick easy graphics that you can export from Insight into a zip file, and then just place them into your documents.

We also like to do this on a site-wide scale when we can. This is a housing project, for instance. There's 12 buildings on this site. And the project team was very worried about having us run analysis on 12 separate buildings. But with Insight and our workflows this was very easy.

And within-- this only took half a day or so-- we're able to show which two buildings. She was interested in trying to narrow down which building should she focus on to try and improve. And so right away we can see that the two highest EUIs are on this north edge here. And so instantly we knew where we should spend a little bit more time, and move forward with other strategies, for instance.

Then also on the site-wide scale, as we developed massing, and want to determine how these masses are interacting with one another, we like to analyze the wind analysis using flow design. This is an overlay, for instance, as far as post-production goes, where we can convey a little bit of motion with the ribbon visual of the analysis, and matching it with the 2D analysis as well. So you can see the highlighted areas that are canyoning winds going between buildings and trees. Keep this in mind as we move forward. I'll explain some changes that we made here.

And so we also like to provide to the client and the design team a video. This allows another dimension for them to understand what really is happening on the site. And so you can see here, we like to highlight areas where strong winds are present, and potential canyonizing winds. These are the winds that increase velocity due to a pinch point or a funnel. It's like fluid dynamics as it goes across the site.

So mix this with the landscape design team. We like to meet with them and try and see how their landscape design interacts with the site. And we can also make informed decisions on where an additional cluster of trees may be beneficial, or where it might be channeling the winds in an inappropriate direction.

And so this is an example deliverable within the team. We just quickly grab a screenshot. We highlight areas of concern, provide a short summary of issues that we have identified, and possible ways of mitigating it. That way they already know kind of the direction we're going. We can set up a meeting and figure out a solution.

We could also do this on the building scale. We can analyze the surface pressure as well. So we are able to see areas of high pressure, and where areas of low pressure may exist. So trying to reduce things like uplift and so on across the building surface.

And then also the 3D analysis shows the winds as they go over top of the building as well. So it's a full relationship or comparison of how the winds are behaving all around the building. And you can see that here.

We mix with a solar irradiance analysis. In this case, you can recognize this is the cluster of buildings that I pointed out earlier. This is in northern New Mexico. So it gets quite cold. It receives a good bit of snow. And the client was concerned-- and the design team was concerned-- about snow buildup and ice.

So we look at the summer solstice. You can see this is the 9:00 AM. The reds and oranges are high exposure of solar energy. And as we get into the greens, it's moderate exposure. And then as we get enter the blues, it's low exposure. So it directly correlates with shade, pretty much. But you can see the intensity of the solar energy on the ground surface.

And so we look at noon as well, and 3 PM. And we overlay this. So that way we can create areas that are highlighted, and we can see the bold blue areas are areas that are never really receiving any solar energy. So the snow and the ice might not get a chance to melt. And so when we match that with the wind analysis, we can find potential areas of snow drift that might not melt away, and just keep piling up. And then also find areas where the buildings aren't actually getting any solar heat gain to assist heating loads.

So in this case, you can see here this is a before and after-- so before and after we shifted these two buildings, and these two buildings along their long axis by about 12 feet. This really opens up these pinch points, and starts to reduce on the hard walking surfaces that were right between the buildings, getting them out of the blue areas. And then also there was a playground in this central area here. You saw canyoning winds go through here earlier on this iteration.

And with the shift, we are able to convey that the wind velocity was able to slow down due to that little jog between them. And then the playground shifted from the center here to over to here. And this was so that way in the winter months the kids, after school, they would be in the sun instead of in the shade, creating a warmer environment for them to play and use and facilitate the playground.

LUC WING: All right. So after we do a bit of those studies, it's time to go ahead and benchmark and integrate these strategies. You want to go ahead and get this to the design team as soon as possible so they can actually utilize this information, take it to the client, and get it approved. So we're going to go into our solar insolation study within Revit now.

When you go ahead and you open Revit, you have your model ready to go. You want to go ahead and go to the Analyze tab, the Insight ribbon, and touch the Solar Analysis button. And you want to go through your settings and make sure you have them all correct.

For this one we used an annual solar study. And it's going to be a cumulative insolation. So we select all of the geometry, and then we go ahead and click Run. And then we get these results.

So this is an example deliverable that we have. And so we really wanted to highlight right here where we have this problem area with our trees. So this is actually our office building. And we used to have cottonwoods that ran across the whole face. And we lost one just recently. And so you can see how this is really affecting our building.

And we have a raised floor HVAC system. And so this is causing tons of problems within our office, where we're getting really warm over here in the summer months, and these guys are staying really cold. But you can see how much these trees really affect the solar insolation along the exterior faces.

And solar insolation is basically just the study. We're studying how much solar energy is hitting a face at a certain time of day. So we'll go ahead and bring this to the interior.

AARON KETNER: All right. And so we look at our daylight illuminance analysis. This is a comparison of a photograph I took on the fall equinox about 7:00 AM. And so I went ahead and went into our Revit model, and placed the camera in the same-- or tried to get as close as possible to where I was standing-- and run our analysis. And we were able to see with the local climate data that I imported for the correct values-- and I'll go through that soon-- we're able to see that the analysis was performing pretty closely, and to match the real-life situation.

And so I'll show you real quick how we go through this. We have to place a 3D camera from an elevation view with the perspective turned off. And this is the reason-- because floor plans, they cut away and remove the geometry above the cut plane. So sun accesses the floor plate. By placing a camera in this way, we're able to keep that geometry above the camera, and the light is actually able to use the windows appropriately.

And so we go ahead, and we render in the cloud, and we change our output type to illuminance. We can set the date and time that we'd like to analyze. In this case, this is the fall equinox.

We go to the sky model, and we gather our climate data from Green Building Studio, where we can find every hour what the direct normal irradiance and the direct horizontal irradiance values are for this specific location. And that's in watts per meter squared. So this is the amount of solar energy striking an area.

Then we're able to set our legend before we hit Render. In our case, we're using foot candles. Many of you are probably familiar with lux. It's a unit to measure the intensity of light. And we go, for the interior analysis, we like to study from 5 to 250 foot candles on a logarithmic scale.

So go ahead and render. And we can piece these together for our clients. That way they can start to get a whole picture, and see how the sun affects the interior space as it moves between the different times of day.

When we enter the warmer season in the summer solstice, we can analyze this and find areas where we can try and remove actual solar. The high glare here is also corresponding to some solar heat gain. So we want to try and find a way with the design team, figure out a way to block this light during this time of year, and also hopefully mitigate some of these issues as well.

When we move to the winter months, you can see that the lower sun angle is actually entering the building much further. And we're actually able to see some issues here. With this being an office building, we want some solar heat gain, but we also don't want to sacrifice the visual comfort that the occupants have inside the space. So we have to think about people at their workstations, and so on.

So we can try and find a happy medium there, and go through multiple iterations that you'll see in one of our case studies. You'll be able to see how we address issues like this. But we're able to identify them with this analysis.

An example deliverable. We like to provide them an easy-to-read scale ranging from no visual demand up to high visual demand. For instance, these are the areas for drawing, electronics work, or labs. In the middle range we have about libraries, lecture halls, and low transitional spaces like corridors.

So we provide 3D camera views whenever we want to focus in on a specific area. For instance, this is a different time of day, but located here looking into this atrium space. And that way we can address more specific issues, but be able to look at the whole floor plate overall.

And provide brief descriptions. That way, the clients, they might not know what foot candles are. This is important in conveying information. Again, this is key to the success of integrating this, is the communication, and being sure that you're very clear with what these pseudo colors mean.

LUC WING: All right. So the interior lighting analysis is usually used for LEED version 4. And you guys are probably used to the old 1-foot grid system, where you had a lux, or a foot candle value, along with a really long legend or a schedule telling all the values, whether it passed or failed throughout the time of the day.

So we went ahead and took this a step further. We created a custom tag that we can go ahead and start seeing really quickly whether they pass or fail from this view. And this has actually been accepted as a submittal for LEED, now.

And even though this is for LEED, we still get the same kind of knowledge out of this, just like what Aaron was talking about. But you can see here in the copy area, at 9 AM it's a 100% compliant, and at 3 PM; where this open office space just next to it is only 83.3% compliant at 9:00 AM, where it's still 100% compliance at 3:00. So this lets us know the morning solar heat gain is where we're having our problems. This could be uncomfortable for our users, causing too much glare, which makes them a little more inefficient, or possibly even distracting them from other work.

So this is the example deliverable. Not only are these graphics useful to win jobs, proposals, or marketing. But what they're really good for is for leveraging your ideas and thoughts to the client. You can really prove or validate what you're trying to sell. Say these fins right here, you want things that are a waste of money. You can validate they're actually performing and doing something to his building.

So we'll get into the building envelope heat transfer. This was actually a case study in Kayenta, Arizona. A client was trying to tell us that this wall assembly-- so, right here is the edge. This is interior space. This is the wall assembly. And this is exterior. And we were focusing in the summer months where they having a problem with heat gain.

And the client was trying to tell us she didn't want to put any continuous insolation on the building. It wasn't part of their code. They didn't want to waste the money on it. So I had one of the architects came up and approached me and asked, how can we prove to them that this continuous insolation adds value to the project, and will save them money?

So we went ahead and did some research. And we found this really cool free software. But what it does, it allows us to do a heat transfer analysis.

So you can see on the assembly on the left, we have this two-inch polyiso insulation. And I'll go ahead and start running the analysis. And you can see how quickly the heat enters the space. And just so you guys know, this is a planned view. So you can multiply that stud times 100 throughout your office, and see how much heat is actually getting in.

So just in two hours, we have a 7-degree Celsius change into our interior spaces without the continuous insolation, whereas on the wall assembly on the left, the heat is still trapped within the wall cavity, and doesn't even enter the stud. This is going to reduce your cooling loads 100 times-- especially in Arizona, when you're hitting 112, 120 degree days. And so we want to go ahead and take these studies and go ahead and benchmark it once more, and try to integrate these decisions into the project.

AARON KETNER: And so here we are. We enter the technologies and systems. This way, this will ultimately-- hopefully-- take the project into the 2030 challenge.

We can start it off by scoping out some areas-- this is within Revit-- doing an insulation analysis on the roof surfaces. We're able to place neighboring buildings and, for instance, trees, and determine areas where there's a lot of solar access through the whole entire year.

So the areas indicated in red, this is very rapid. We're able to see various levels. In this case, the areas in red are able to take this project from starting out at the 79.4 baseline, which you can obtain through Zero Tool pretty quickly, zerotool.org. And then through the design strategies phase, the building was at 41.4 EUI.

And then, with this size system here, we're estimating around a 74% reduction, and obtaining a 20.2 EUI. We're actually able to measure it. This project was pursuing LEED. The improvements for the renewables credit was up by 2. And for the energy performance, we had estimated an increase in 6. So we're also able to see the impact in the LEED certification for the building.

We'll also begin the production estimates and the payback. In this case, we are conservatively estimating about 11.9 year payback for this system.

The client, whenever I asked if there was any questions, he asked me how does he say no. And so then we moved forward. And we were able to provide an even more in-depth analysis.

And you can see the increase in the system here. So we took it to the full extents, and kept all of the modules within a 90% solar access annually, and lay them out here-- also accounting for all the setbacks and so on for the location.

We're able to see how much the system would be producing through each month of the year. And we're also able to see the system costs compared to the net present value, and see that in this case it's up about $83,000. And we're also able to measure the environmental impacts of the system as well.

And so for this project, this is in downtown Albuquerque. This is a housing project. This is the system they're moving forward with. But I'll get more in-depth of how we got here.

We started off by showing the full potential. You can see some pieces missing. That's because they're being shaded by the building. So it would be not useful to put the panels there as well. So this is a 90% solar access annually minimum, and a maximum capacity of 63.9 kilowatts.

We're able to see that this system offsets the building's usage by 25%, fossil fuel usage by 25%. We're able to see the bell curve across the year annually. We're also able to see the gains and losses from the system based on location.

In this case, we were fixed due to the city block, and where the parking needed to be located. So we can see that we're losing 7.6% due to tilt and orientation, 6.4% due to the shade-- it is 90% solar access annually-- and 2% for soiling. We have a lot of dust in the air in our area. And so we can account for dirt to the build-up on the panels.

Environmental conditions, things like overheating. Panels lose efficiency in too hot of an urban condition during summer months. And then also 4% due to the DC/AC conversion. So it takes into account many things. And that way we can rely on it a little more heavily.

Over the lifetime of the system, forgot to mention that we consider the lifetime of the system to be the warranty of the panel. We know that it can go beyond that. But we like to just match the warranty and show the impact within the warranty period. So this would save about 2 million pounds of coal over its lifetime-- the 25 years-- removing 401 cars from the road per year, and driving 4.5 million fewer miles per year. It's also like planting 48,800 new trees every year as well.

And we also like to take this to the client. This is often what the client really enjoys seeing. They don't want to really see all the kilowatt hours, and the bar graphs and stuff, because they like to see kind of tangible things.

This is the system they're starting off with. But we showed the impact of it midway. And then this is the full, if they wanted to pursue the 2030 challenge, we showed them how to get there. And then also the impacts of that system.

So you can see compared to where they're starting off with for now, which is OK, there was no PV planned on the project. And it's being built right now. So we were able to sneak this in there. So we consider it a success that there is even some there.

But you can see that it increases almost 2 million, by saving 2 million pounds of coal if they were actually going to pursue that 2030 challenge. And it's a pretty big significant jump in some of the other statistics as well.

We also convey the bill savings. This is very important to the client as well, and provides that "how do they say no" kind of question. You can see that it's taking 25% away from the local utility grid, and keeping it generated on site. And then the first month utility bill estimate was estimated to be about $4,400, $4,500. And with solar it would be about $3,000.

And that adds up. So with by the end of the first year, you can see without solar, the estimate was about $53,800. And with this photovoltaic system it would reduce down to about $36,900.

We can also see the payback point. In this case, this is a very good payback point, well before the halfway point of the warranty at 7.9 years. And then net present value, that is up about $50,000. So that net present value is basically in addition to the system cost-- the original system cost-- if you add up all of the savings that you're getting per year like this, you're up about $50,000 by the end of the warranty period. So your savings are actually earning you back the system costs pretty early.

And so if that doesn't do it, we can look to the off-site renewables. In this case this can be temporary, where they can purchase it, and say they wanted to pursue the 2030 challenge. But they didn't want to have it all on site all at once. But they wanted to phase their on-site photovoltaic systems. They could purchase these renewable energy certificates early on.

LUC WING: All right. So as a firm, we've designed over 2 megawatt systems totaling over 97,000 square feet. That's about 6.8 million pounds of coal that would be saved. And we have these other wonderful stats for you. It's like 13,500 cars removed from the road, and over 152.5 million miles less driven a year; like planting 1.6 million trees.

And so how this breaks down, in one year of reporting at D/P/S, we are reaching this target of 49% average EUI reduction. And this is before we really started developing this. So about halfway through, we really started pushing and developing it, and getting this reduction percentage to be a lot higher. So we can go ahead and expect some increase in there, hopefully. Hopefully soon we'll get some more results for you guys.

But the current 2030 challenge goal is about 70%. So you can see, we're just about there. And we're still haven't target the main goal. In 13 years we need to be net zero. So a lot of these systems need to be scalable.

And we'll go ahead and dive into some of a project overview.

AARON KETNER: All right. You've been seeing this project pop up. This is the first case study. This is actually our first building that is achieving the 2030 challenge. This is an educational office building in Southeast New Mexico. So, obviously, the warmer climate you can see here.

Keep in mind the scrim. I'll go over how the design team approached this, and the interior courtyard right here.

And so in the design strategies phase, we established the zero tool baseline EUI of about 76%. And by the end of the design strategies phase we were able to attain 57.1% reduction. That's up from our average in the office of the 49%. So that's a fairly significant increase. And you see our EUI is down to the 32.6% from Insight, and some of the key metrics that helped us get there.

And this is one of the design strategies that was implemented. It was this metal scrim that was able to stand off in the building. This helps break the solar energy before it actually hits the building envelope. And we were able to analyze that through our solar insolation analysis.

So we're able to see the success of protecting the entry from high amounts of solar energy, allowing for an easier transition visually for occupants as they transition into the building, or leaving the building into the brighter exterior environment. And we're also able to see how the scrim successfully shades the exterior building envelope.

We're also able to show the significance of pushing back these windows, and insetting them within the exterior wall. So that way the building starts to shade itself. We don't have to apply additional window shades. So the building is working for itself.

An interior courtyard. Here's some shots from within the space and in the lobby. You can see that the daylight is bringing it into the center of the building, therefore reducing the amount of artificial lighting needed during the day, and allowing occupants to have access to nature and daylight.