1. Price volatility, environmentalism,
and emerging technologies eclipsing
deregulation as primary industry driver
T h e N e w E r a o f
Energy Management
initiative is the world’s most comprehensive
package of legislation to reduce greenhouse-gas
emissions from existing government, commercial,
and residential buildings. Once implemented, it
will reduce energy costs by some $750 million
a year while reducing citywide
emissions by 5 percent, the equiv-
alent of eliminating all carbon
emissions from Oakland, Calif.
Clearly, a new era of energy
efficiency is upon us. How, then, can we best
prepare for the coming changes? One thing is
certain: We do not have to look far for examples.
This article discusses how energy-efficient tech-
nologies are being applied successfully in com-
mercial and industrial facilities across the United
States, reducing per-capita energy consumption.
DELIVERING ECONOMIC VALUE THROUGH ENERGY-
EFFICIENT TECHNOLOGIES
Options for improving whole-building energy
performance include, but certainly are not lim-
ited to, those in the following projects. In each
case, energy consumption and, subsequently,
carbon footprint and energy costs were reduced.
Each project has been justified through life-cycle-
cost analysis, and most have highly attractive pay-
backs.
Facility energy audit. With heating and cooling
a significant budgetary expense, Waunankee
Community School District in Waunankee,
Wis., was looking to lower energy costs and
improve long-term HVAC-system reliability.
A national HVAC company performed a
thorough audit of the district’s facilities to gain a
W
axman-Markey, cap and trade,
smart-grid infrastructure, real-
time pricing, demand response,
on-site energy storage—never has there been
a more fascinating—or challenging—time to
pursue the field of energy or
facility management, as we are
experiencing the convergence
of three long-gestating trends
that will forever change the way
we purchase, manage, and consume energy.
Energy-price volatility peaked during the
summer of 2008, and as expected, consumption
behavior started to change. Environmental
awareness (i.e., global warming) hit its tipping
point around 2006/2007, evolving from a
social to a legislative issue that no longer could
be ignored or deferred. Lastly, energy efficiency
emerged as one of the most dynamic segments
of the energy industry, driven primarily by the
goal of keeping rising energy costs in check.
Early signs of this convergence during the
early 2000s led to highly progressive regulatory
and legislative initiatives in California, which
introduced a multitude of programs to manage
per-capita energy consumption. According to
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, Californians use
40-percent less energy than the average Ameri-
can, while California’s first-in-the-nation state-
wide green-building codes are further reducing
the state’s carbon footprint.
Not to be outdone, New York City Mayor
Michael Bloomberg announced in April a major
legislative package focused on creating a green-
buildings plan for the City of New York. This
Peter Armstrong is a strategic-marketing and business-development professional with more than 15 years of
experience in the global energy industry. He can be contacted at petersarmstrong@aol.com.
By PETER ARMSTRONG
Energy-Efficiency Market Strategist
Houston, Texas
18 September 2009 HPAC
-Efficiency

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20 September 2009 HPAC
E N E R G Y - E F F I C I E N C Y M A N A G E M E N T
baseline understanding of energy con-
sumption and load profiles. Its solution
included optimizing heating and cool-
ing schedules, changing temperature
set points, installing carbon-dioxide
(CO2
) monitors, installing lighting
occupancy sensors, and retrofitting
lighting to achieve greater efficiencies.
The retrofit project achieved an 18-
percent reduction in electricity con-
sumption and a 24-percent reduction
in heating-fuel consumption. To en-
sure the perpetuation of those savings,
the school district’s facility managers
and the HVAC company’s engineering
team continuously monitor and verify
energy consumption.
District-coolingretrofitandperformance
contract. Facing rising energy costs,
aging infrastructure, and budget cuts,
the North Carolina state government
was looking to reduce energy consump-
tion. It knew there was cost-savings
potential in the existing chilled-water
loop at the State Capitol in Raleigh,
but did not have the money to fund a
retrofit project. Knowing it would need
to solicit third-party financing for the
project, the government issued a re-
quest for proposals from performance-
Arboretum Elementary School, one of six schools in Waunankee Community School
District.
PhotocourtesyofComfortSystemsUSA
The North Carolina State Capitol.
PhotocourtesyofNatgunCorp.

4. contracting firms. The request speci-
fied the state was open to new ideas
and seeking creative solutions.
A provider of energy and energy-
related products and services was
awarded the contract based on its plan
to retrofit existing assets and expand
the district-cooling loop. The improve-
ments included lighting upgrades,
high-efficiency HVAC equipment, new
energy-management control strategies,
water-conservation initiatives, and a
significant expansion and upgrade of
the district-cooling system.
The district-energy solution inte-
grated four technologies: district cool-
ing, thermal-energy storage (TES),
a chilled-water plant, and improved
chilled-water delta-T.
Thermal-energy
storage. The pro-
vider of energy
and energy-re-
lated products
and services for
the North Caro-
lina State Capitol
selected a maker
of wire-wound
concrete tanks to
build a 2.7 mil-
lion-gal. chilled-
water TES tank to augment the new
high-efficiency chiller plant. With
TES, the state was able to shift load
to nighttime use in charging the tank,
which, in turn, enabled the state to
take advantage of time-of-use rates
and use stored chilled water during
daytime peak periods. Additionally,
TES reduced project capital cost by
decreasing the chiller-plant capacity
necessary to support full load.
The state signed a 12-year perfor-
mance contract with the provider of
energy and energy-related products
and services, and each building now
is metered independently and billed
in accordance with its own standard
electric-utility tariff.
HVAC optimization. As the campus of
the University of La Verne in La Verne,
Calif., grew, improving plant efficiency
and lowering facility costs became a
top priority. To that end, the univer-
sity’s facilities department, working
with an HVAC maintenance, service,
building-automation, and retrofit con-
tracting company, sought to optimize
its HVAC system at the same time it
upgraded its centrifugal-chiller plant.
The central-plant expansion in-
cluded the addition of a chiller and the
conversion of the primary/secondary
pumping loop to an all-variable-speed/
primary-only system. Additionally, the
university installed two components of
ultrahigh-performance HVAC-optimi-
zation software: one that continuously
gathers information about campus
building loads and controls pump and
chiller speeds to match central-plant
chilled-water supply to real-time de-
mand and another that provides the
university’s plant managers secure,
real-time Web-based monitoring that
enables automated measurement and
verification, trend-data viewing, and
energy-savings tracking. The combina-
tion of these software components is
expected to ensure optimized HVAC-
system performance for the life of the
plant.
With the production of only the
amount of chilled water required to
maintain building comfort, the uni-
versity’s chiller-plant efficiency in-
creased by 47 percent during the first
six months of operation. During this
time, the plant operated at an average
of 0.55 kw per ton, compared with
an average of 1.04 kw per ton prior to
installation. Additionally, the project
was supported by a $14,000 utility
rebate. During the first year of opera-
tion, the university is expected to save
more than 125,000 kwh of electricity
and more than 70,000 gal. of water and
reduce its carbon footprint by approxi-
mately 160,000 lb.
On-site solar-power generation. The
Shops at Mission Viejo in Mission
Viejo, Calif., operated by Simon Prop-
22 September 2009 HPAC
E N E R G Y - E F F I C I E N C Y M A N A G E M E N T
The facade of the thermal-energy-storage tank at the North Carolina State Capitol was
designed to blend in with an existing parking structure and partially buried to limit its
height relative to the garage.
PhotocourtesyofNatgunCorp.
Financial and system benefits of district-cooling retrofit at North
Carolina State Capitol.
Projected Actual
Energy-cost savings $1.80 million $1.98 million
Kwh reduction, total 19.8 million 21.8 million
Kwh reduction, lighting only 2.99 million 3.17 million
Water-use reduction 8,391 Kgal 8,605 Kgal
Fuel-use reduction 4,816 therms 4,752 therms
Capital avoidance $7 million $7 million
New infrastructure $21.4 million $21.4 million
CO2
reduction 28.1 kilotons 28.4 kilotons
DatacourtesyofPepcoEnergyServices

5. 24 September 2009 HPAC
E N E R G Y - E F F I C I E N C Y M A N A G E M E N T
erty Group, is the site of a 20,000-sq-ft
solar-roof installation. During its first
two months of operation, the 173-kw
system created 24,510 kwh, which off-
set 33,047 lb of CO2
emissions. The
1,020 panels supply about 5 percent
of the 4.2 million kwh the 1,150,591-
sq-ft mall consumes annually.
Construction began Dec. 3, 2008,
and was completed 20 days later. The
project was funded partially through
utility incentives, which helped miti-
gate total project installation cost by
improving both project payback and
net-present-value financial perfor-
mance. To pay for the system, Simon
Property Group entered into a multi-
year power-purchase agreement with
the project developer.
Combined heat and power (CHP). When
Shands HealthCare decided to build
a cancer center in hurricane-prone
Gainesville, Fla., it knew it needed an
efficient, reliable, and environmen-
tally friendly energy source to keep the
hospital operational in the event of
a power disruption. Following the
Northeast Blackout of 2003 and hur-
ricanes Katrina and Rita, emergency
generators no longer are seen as viable
for state-of-the-art digital hospitals.
Shands required an on-site energy
system that would keep the facility
operational for days—not hours—after
disaster strikes.
Shands selected the city-owned
utility to finance, design, build, own,
operate, and maintain an on-site
energy center as part of a 50-year
contract. The utility determined that
a CHP energy system would be more
efficient, reliable, and cost-effective
than an N+1 emergency backup-
generator solution.
The utility selected an international
engineering consultant to manage the
design and construction of the energy
plant. The CHP system consists of a
4.3-Mw gas turbine capable of produc-
ing 800 bhp of steam and 2,400 tons of
chilled water. Compared with a tradi-
tional central power plant, the on-site
system produces 95-percent less nitro-
gen oxide, nearly 100-percent less sul-
fur dioxide, and 58-percent less CO2
.
CONCLUSION
Our focus increasingly is shifting
from simply using energy to managing
it. The emergence of smart-grid com-
munications infrastructure and moni-
toring/control technologies gradually
will modify the way we consume and
manage energy in our homes, offices,
and factories. Just as telecommunica-
tions has evolved from basic services,
the energy industry will evolve.
This new era of energy-efficiency
management promises to be both
fascinating and challenging. Over the
next several years, with continued
legislative and regulatory initiatives,
we likely will see greater economic
justification for market adoption.
There will be more technologies—and
more choices—as we look to reduce
energy consumption and cost.
For past HPAC Engineering feature
articles, visit www.hpac.com.
A component of the HVAC-optimization software used on the University of La Verne
project.
CourtesyofOptimumEnergyLLC
The Shops at Mission Viejo’s solar-roof installation is the largest of any mall operator in
the United States.
PhotocourtesyofElementMarketsLLC