Hello,
I think either of those approaches could work.
For a description of the commercial building types in the Download Electric Load macro, follow the link in the macro's instructions, or see
DOE Commercial Reference Buildings
.
If you use the macro with a commercial case, after downloading and applying the hourly data, you can scale the hourly data to monthy bill data on the Electric Load page by checking the
Normalize supplied load profile to monthly utility bill data and entering a set of 12 monthly consumption (kWh) values.
The residential and commercial financial models are similar. Here are the differences:
The commercial model can calculate a tax deduction for depreciation. The residential model does not include depreciation.
Operating costs are tax deductible for the commercial model, but not for the residential model.
Project debt interest payments are tax deductible for the commercial model, and for the residnential model when you choose the mortgage option on the Financial Parameters page.
You could also generate an hourly load profile from a residential case in SAM, export it to a text file from the data viewer, and then import it into a commercial case. To export the data, you would click View load data on the Electric Load page, and then right click the graph to export the data.
As always, be sure to check all of your inputs to make sure they are appropriate for your analysis.
Best regards,
Paul.
