Executive Summary
This report is the culmination of a year-long assessment and proposed redesign of the Marine Science Initiative Building located in Newport, Oregon.
Hybrid Ventilation
The initial assessment of the interior building loads of the MSI Building revealed that a large percentage of interior loads were the direct result of office spaces along the perimeter of the second and third floor of the Lab Wing. Through computational fluid dynamics, the proposed incorporation of natural ventilation into the existing system was assessed. The redesign system failed to meet necessary thermal comfort requirements and was not recommended. The redesign system did meet ventilation requirements for the space and saw thermal comfort improvements from the initial mechanical design when modeled.
Geothermal Assessment
To combat the high electrical and gas consumption of the building, the feasibility of geothermal ground loops was studied for implementation into the MSI building’s heating and cooling plant. Ground source water-to-water heat pumps replaced the existing gas-fired boilers, and air-cooled chiller. Three alternatives to looping configurations were discussed. Of the three, the final recommended system is Alternative 3: The ground loop heat exchanger “thermopile” system integrated into the building’s concrete piles, with air-cooled chiller as supplemental heat rejection.
An additional assessment was conducted to ensure that the addition of the ground loop pipes into the designed concrete piles would not interfere with the transmission of lateral or gravity loads into the ground.
Net Zero Energy Evaluation
An assessment of the capability of achieving yearly net-zero energy consumption for the Marine Science Initialize Building was conducted. The reduction of the over-all HVAC energy consumption though the geothermal heat exchanger allowed for net-zero energy consumption to be achieved through the implementation of 379 panels. The allowable roof area of the MSI Building has more than enough space to account for the installation of the panels. However, it should be noted that a portion of this roof area is below the expected water level of an XXL1 and L1 tsunami event. The final recommendation is to limit the photovolatic array to the available roof space above this water line even though this net-zero generation is not met.