
Commercial Building Codes
The International Code Council, a Washington, D.C.-based organization that develops commercial and residential building codes and standards used by many state and local governments, has been working hard on integrating energy-efficiency principles into its model codes and announced significant progress over the past couple of months.
The group (made up primarily of local and state building code officials) adopted revisions to its 2012 International Energy Conservation Code (IECC) in late October that will raise the bar for energy efficiency in commercial buildings. The revised code cuts energy use by 30 percent compared to the technologies specified in the 2006 IECC. The changes were proposed by a coalition led by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), the New Buildings Institute (NBI) and the American Institute of Architects (AIA).
Most of that 30 percent in savings comes from new requirements on heating, ventilation and cooling (HVAC) and building-envelope specifications, but there is some electrical impact that distributors and reps in cities where the code is used will want to be aware of. The changes include requirements that commercial buildings with a window-to-wall ratio over 30 percent must have daylight zone controls, and requirements for skylights or other daylight sources in spaces greater than 10,000 square feet for certain types of buildings. The revisions also include a new compliance option allowing the builder to choose between high-performance lighting, high-performance HVAC equipment or onsite renewable power generation in meeting the code's requirements for energy conservation.
These changes are in addition to the electrical requirements of the existing code (the 2009 IECC), which cover everything from lighting system controls to the connection of ballasts, maximum lighting for interior applications and minimum lighting for exterior applications. For example, the 2009 IECC requires dimming systems in any areas with walls or floor-to-ceiling partions. Each area that is required to have a manual control “shall also allow the occupant to reduce the connected lighting load in a reasonably uniform illumination pattern by at least 50 percent.”
Methods specified include controlling all lamps or luminaires; dual switching of alternate rows of luminaires, alternate luminaires or alternate lamps; switching the middle lamp luminaires independently of the outer lamps; or switching each luminaire or each lamp.
Requirements also cover time clock controls, occupancy sensors or automatic daylight controls, photosensors or astronomical time switches on outdoor lighting, limitations on the energy consumption of exit signs and requirements that buildings with multiple dwelling units have separate meters for each unit.
Most of these requirements have some exceptions, and there are some very specific limitations on certain parameters, such as the lighting power allowed for various applications. For example, the lobby of a motion picture theater is allowed 1W of lighting per square foot while a performing arts theater lobby is allowed more than three times that power (3.3 W/ft2), and the lobby of a religious building is limited to 0.6 W/ft2. Any distributor or rep selling into a market that adopts the IECC should dig into section 505 of the code and learn all its electrical requirements.
For cities and states that want to be closer to the leading edge of green building, the ICC introduced public version 2.0 of its International Green Construction Code (IGCC) at the USGBC's Greenbuild conference in Chicago last month.
IGCC is a model code promoting construction practices that maximize efficiency and minimize environmental impact, given existing technologies and practices. It seeks to set a standard for what can be considered a “high-performance green building.” This is a much more aggressive code than the IECC, as the new requirements of the 2012 IECC form the baseline standard for development of the IGCC.
The IGCC includes requirements for a much broader scope of parameters, including site selectio