Abstract
Comfort cooling systems are appropriate for human occupancy environments. However, they are not well suited to environments that require precise regulation of temperature, humidity, air quality and 24/7 availability, such as those for communication buildings. These buildings support critical operations, namely telephone, radio and IT network equipment. To eliminate or reduce any chance of costly business interruptions, communication building systems must run 24/7 with code-specified redundancy in energy-intensive power, cooling and air moving systems. Because of these requirements-and because minimum energy performance standards are fairly new for critical cooling equipment-these buildings have high energy use intensities (EUI). This article focuses on the energy-efficiency challenges and opportunities of these buildings and uses a methodology to calculate EUI baseline and targets for communication buildings.