RESNET's Sibling COMNET Offers New Energy Modeling Rules

An organization that has certified home energy raters for 15 years is moving into the commercial building market. RESNET has created COMNET, which currently offers guidelines for energy modeling and is working on certification for commercial energy auditors and raters. The energy modeling guidelines, “COMNET Technical Guidelines & Procedures for Energy Modeling & Rating,” seek to create standardized modeling practices that can be used to pursue the federal commercial buildings tax deduction, green building ratings, and energy labels. Each of these applications requires comparison to a different baseline—a different version of ASHRAE 90.1, for example—making it difficult to find percent energy savings. COMNET is working with software companies to make it easier to automatically generate baseline models from a design model, making the comparison to a particular code or standard easier. The guidelines also include the first standardized practices for modeling unregulated loads. More information is available at www.comnet.org.