Working on a 12-story office building in Boise on Idaho Power's Schedule 19 (Large General Service). Building is about 285,000 sq ft, built in 1995. Monthly usage averaging 420 MWh. That works out to about 17.7 kBtu per sq ft annually. Does that sound reasonable for a mid-rise office in an intermountain climate? Using Energy Star Portfolio Manager but want to sanity check against real-world experience.
Quick question on office building EUI benchmarks
17.7 kBtu/sq ft seems low for a 1995 building unless they've done major efficiency upgrades. Here in Missouri, we typically see Ameren-served office buildings from that era running 25-35 kBtu/sq ft depending on HVAC efficiency and building envelope. Are you sure about the square footage? Sometimes developers quote gross vs. net differently and that can throw off the EUI calculation by 15-20%.
Warren, Elmer's probably right about the square footage issue. Down here in New Orleans, we see a lot of confusion between rentable and usable square feet in office building benchmarking. Entergy commercial accounts often get misrepresented when building managers use different measurement standards. I'd double-check the floor area calculation and make sure you're using the same methodology as your benchmark dataset.