Not a billing error question. Client wants to allocate utility cost by room to evaluate strain
profitability and is asking me to design it.
Adjacent to what we do and I think within scope, but I want to flag where I stopped.
Design is straightforward. Submeter each flower room's lighting panel and each room's dedicated HVAC
and dehumidification. Shared loads, which are the trim room, dry rooms, offices, and the chilled
water plant, get allocated.
The allocation of the chilled water plant is where it gets hard. Each room's contribution to the
central plant load depends on its lighting load, its transpiration rate, and its setpoints, none of
which are metered directly. I can proxy it with lighting load, which is imperfect because a room in
late flower transpires much more than a room just flipped.
I told the client I can give them a defensible allocation but not a precise one, and that the
precision they want probably requires BTU metering on the chilled water loops, which is a mechanical
engineering scope rather than mine.
Curious whether others take on this kind of work or refer it out.
profitability and is asking me to design it.
Adjacent to what we do and I think within scope, but I want to flag where I stopped.
Design is straightforward. Submeter each flower room's lighting panel and each room's dedicated HVAC
and dehumidification. Shared loads, which are the trim room, dry rooms, offices, and the chilled
water plant, get allocated.
The allocation of the chilled water plant is where it gets hard. Each room's contribution to the
central plant load depends on its lighting load, its transpiration rate, and its setpoints, none of
which are metered directly. I can proxy it with lighting load, which is imperfect because a room in
late flower transpires much more than a room just flipped.
I told the client I can give them a defensible allocation but not a precise one, and that the
precision they want probably requires BTU metering on the chilled water loops, which is a mechanical
engineering scope rather than mine.
Curious whether others take on this kind of work or refer it out.