The overall topic of resilience is a broad one with many facets of design and operation contributing to creating a more resilient building. One aspect of particular relevance to the building systems industry is energy usage, as was briefly mentioned in earlier columns. In this column, I’m going to take a deeper dive into how energy efficiency can enhance resilience and some of the ways in which design choices beyond the mechanical and electrical equipment can affect energy usage. Per the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) report, “When a critical public facility needs less energy to function, it also needs less backup generation on-site to operate when the grid goes down.”
Of course, this applies to buildings other than critical government facilities. Any building that uses less energy day-to-day will also require less energy during a crisis.