Gaia Samaritan

Overview:

The project began with the team brainstorming general architectural layouts of the museum building. After one of our team members drew up multiple possible layouts for the museum, ultimately a two-story design was decided upon by the team. Solar panels were then researched to obtain the most energy efficient panels for the project. Based on the selected panel’s characteristics and the solar exposure, the required EUI to obtain net-zero was found to be 11.85 kBtu/sqft/year. After selecting the panels and creating a 3D model in Autodesk Revit, the team developed a baseline energy model in Trace700. The energy model included a Packaged Terminal Air Conditioner, ASHRAE 90.1 lighting standards, ASHRAE 62.1 occupancy standards, the utilization schedules provided by the competition and Denver, Colorado weather data. This baseline model produced an EUI of 69.0 kBtu/sqft/year. To improve upon this, the members of the team were delegated energy saving research tasks. Several energy saving methods were researched such as lighting, improvement of the HVAC system, ventilation and the building envelope.

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