Trial / Demo
IES Consulting performed detailed analysis to assess whether the design achieved the comfort requirements of WELL credit 76 Thermal Comfort, which requires an ASHRAE Standard 55-2013 assessment.
The project is a 14 storey office building located in Lyon, France with a floor area of approximately ~46 000 m2. An iconic building, Sky 56 rises up at the end of Nelson Mandela Esplanade, marking a new gateway to the south of the district.
IES Consulting created a VE energy model with building attributes including fabric, room conditions and air exchanges to determine the levels of comfort set out within the standard. The thermal comfort metric Predicted Mean Vote (PMV) was assessed for a series of occupied spaces to determine the frequency of occupied hours within the neutral band of thermal comfort (-0.5 to +0.5). Within this range, it is considered comfortable where less than 10% of occupants would be dissatisfied with the environmental conditions. Below -0.5 is referred to as cool conditions and above +0.5 is referred to as warm conditions.
A dynamic simulation evaluated whether the building and its HVAC systems could achieve suitable comfort conditions for the PMV scale.
The results demonstrated the office spaces for the vast majority of time were above the 90% threshold for the number of hours lying within the neutral band. This is an indication of a high performing thermal comfort environment.
