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Greatly Reduce Your Building’s Energy Use in 12 Months

Lauren Pitcher 10:15AM, August 3, 2010

When dealing with commercial buildings, we all know the basic approaches to energy efficiency: improved operations and maintenance, equipment upgrades and energy-saving behaviors. As more organizations adopt energy-saving programs, we’ve seen many best practices emerge. These usually involve corporate commitments, planning, measurement and tracking, and a staged approach to improvements. The results can be significant; organizations are able to trim energy use by 30 percent or more during the course of an energy-efficiency program.

What if the Washington, D.C.-based U.S. Environmental Protection Agency required you to reduce your building’s energy consumption as much as possible in 12 months, starting today? What would you do? Where would you start?

It so happens that we made 14 phone calls requiring this when we launched EPA’s National Building Competition. We upped the stakes—and added an element of fun—by turning this into a competition. As part of the rules, we asked each of our 14 competitors to provide regular updates to let us know what they were doing to save energy. We set them up with Twitter accounts and they embraced the idea, firing off a flurry of tweets within minutes of launch. Now, three months later, we have compiled a unique peek into some of the measures these 14 buildings are taking to save as much energy as possible. Some already had energy-efficiency programs in place when they got the call from EPA; some didn’t. Some have big budgets and a dedicated staff of energy managers; some don’t.

Before we get into the tweets, if you haven’t already, please meet our 14 competitors. They include hotels, schools, college dorms, retail stores, office buildings and other buildings we see in our communities every day. Their strategies are paying off already at the competition’s midpoint; leading competitors are turning in double-digit reductions in just six months!

Let’s take a look at some of the themes that have emerged from the activity. These were all originally written as tweets, hence the shorthand writing style.

OPERATIONS & MAINTENANCE

Working with Different Teams in Your Building

  • 1525 Wilson Blvd.: Our vendors are helping us work off the waste! Janitorial team checks to make sure all HVAC vents are clean and unobstructed.
  • Sheraton Austin Hotel: Worked with our banquets team on a program to ensure lights are off in unused banquet spaces.
  • Courtyard Marriott San Diego Downtown: We've been retraining the housekeeping staff and supervisors to reset guestroom thermostats back to minimal setback at check out.

    • Timers and Sensors

  • 522 Fifth Ave.: Installed a timer on a window unit in the engineering managers' office. Looking for more "little" ways to save energy.
  • Solon Family Health Center: We’re replacing light switches with new energy-saving, time-sensor switches.
  • Courtyard Marriott San Diego Downtown: We've installed motion-sensor light switches for entry light and bathroom in guestrooms as a test. Will let you know how it goes.
  • Morrison Hall: UNC Morrison is testing VERVE Living Systems occupancy sensor in four rooms to turn up thermostat when room is unoccupied.
  • Morrison Hall: Housing and Energy Management are partnering to schedule room-by-room occupancy for first time this summer; 75 percent are unoccupied.
  • 522 Fifth Ave.: 522 Crew is monitoring occupied areas after 6 p.m. to eliminate the need for extended hours of air conditioning. Every minute counts!
  • JCPenney: Temporarily installed HOBO data loggers as a way to verify our indoor temperatures and humidity.

    • Other Operations & Maintenance

  • Virginia Beach Convention Center: Identified unnecessary architectural lights outside of the meeting suites and disabled them for energy savings.
  • Van Holten Primary School: Bi-level lighting controls in the gym allow P.E. teachers to use less energy. Keep the temperature lower in the gym, too.
  • JCPenney: Completed updating the weather stripping and door brushes at all the store’s exterior entrances. No air leaks here!
  • TuckerHall: Adjusting the schedule on outside air units at Tucker Hall made chilled water use drop by 25 percent. Little changes make big differences!
  • 522 Fifth Ave.: Build ice at night to cool during the day. Cheaper energy?lower peak demand?less power supplied to grid?less fossil fuel burned.
  • JCPenney: We have completed the new window tinting at the store’s south entrance. This should help with the summer months ahead.
  • Virginia Beach Convention Center: Our ops team designed and installed custom covers for refrigerated cases to conserve energy in the concession stands.
  • 522 Fifth Ave.: Water balanced the chill water systems to slow down the pumps and save kWh.

    • UPGRADES

    Lighting

  • Courtyard Marriott San Diego Downtown: T8 fluorescent bulb retrofit installation. Changed all the bulbs from 36W to 25W with an energy savings of 30 percent.
  • 522 Fifth Ave.: Replaced battery-pack lighting in all three stairwells with more efficient fixtures—and took the stairs instead of the elevator.
  • Solon Family Health Center: With the replacement of halogen lights with LEDs, we've lowered the wattage and have better illumination, giving a more inviting atmosphere.
  • Sheraton Austin Hotel: We just finished changing out the lighting on all of our exit signs. Each sign's lighting went from 20 watts to 2 watts!

    • Other Upgrades

  • Virginia Beach Convention Center: Just installed new MERV 14 HVAC filters for improved indoor air quality and energy efficiency.
  • Courtyard Marriott San Diego Downtown: Getting a quote from a speed-drive contractor on an installation upgrade to the hotel’s main air handlers to help reduce non-peak energy use.
  • Solon Family Health Center: Planting more shade trees on west side of building.
  • 522 Fifth Ave.: Cool! Installed new chiller with variable frequency drive. Lower peak demand, lower consumption, increased cooling efficiency.
  • Solon Family Health Center: One of our two new energy-efficient elevators is in the process of being installed.

    • BEHAVIORAL CHANGES

  • Solon Family Health Center: Employees have walked up 11,949 steps to save energy. Combined, that’s nearly to the top of Mt. Fuji!

    • Employees’ Computer Monitors

  • 522 Fifth Ave.: Frank, Steve, Chris and Amy are lowering their monitor brightness to a 50 percent level. Every little bit helps!
  • 1525 Wilson Blvd.: Accenture, a two-floor tenant, has set their monitors to go into "sleep mode" after 20 minutes of inactivity. Estimated savings: 10,000 kWh per month!

    • Natural Light

  • Van Holten Primary School: Three more weeks of school to go. We're using natural light to keep the demand and classroom temperature down.
  • Crystal River Elementary School: Here we are using a light meter to find out more about how much natural light we really have in our school.

    • Dashboards, Banners, Signs

  • 522 Fifth Ave.: Finalizing elevator cab energy dashboards: a captive audience. If occupants can SEE the energy they use, they might change their ways!
  • Morrison Hall: UNC Morrison's Lucid Technologies dashboard shows student energy use through finals, parties and moving out.
  • Courtyard Marriott San Diego Downtown: Moved our “EPA Contestant Banner” to the employees’ corridor to remind all employees to do their best to conserve energy at work and home.
  • Courtyard Marriott San Diego Downtown: Created new guest-room door hangers with info about the EPA National Building Competition. They ask guests to help us make a positive impact.
  • Van Holten Primary School: Banner looks great on our building! Displaying it reminds us to turn it back or turn it off to save energy.

    • Read all the contestant tweets and access links to photos and videos.

    Lauren Pitcher is a communications specialist in the ENERGY STAR Commercial & Industrial Buildings Program.

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