Determining baseling energy consumption and peak cooling loads of a 107-year-old science museum using DOE 2.1E

The Energy Resources Center (ERC) at the University of Illinois at Chicago conducted an energy assessment to determine the peak cooling loads of the Museum of Science and Industry (MSI) as part of MSI’s Long Term Development Plan. MSI is located in Chicago, Illinois next to Lake Michigan, and experiences substantial seasonal weather changes. The DOE-2.1E program was used to accomplish this goal. The MSI intended to use the DOE-2.1E model to analyze the lifecycle costs of several mechanical equipment configurations. The modeling effort was successful using industry standard validation protocols. Future refinement of the model may require the use of updated local weather data to use in place of the typical meteorological year weather
data (TMY2).