Consulting-Specifying Engineer - December 2007 - (Page 48) (Continued from page 45) Equipment retrofits Adobe’s six equipment projects include installations of variable frequency drives (VFD) on supply fans and installations of adjustable frequency drives (AFD) on chillers. This balanced major rotating equipment throughout the facility. Retrofitting VFDs on the main supply fan cost Adobe $73,000, but gave a rebate of $29,400. Annual savings for this installation are $12,000. Projected payback will occur in 3.6 years and this project gives Adobe a 28% ROI. AFDs also were installed. Prior to this project, Adobe said that chillers accounted for nearly 30% of its building energy consumption. Adobe spent $65,000 on the AFD project, and received a rebate of $41,207. Annual savings are $38,719 and a payback occurred in 7 months. This project gave a 163% ROI. opment of a Web-based interface that allows these systems to be curtailed with a single global command. It now takes one engineer 1 min or 2 min to perform this job. These changes pointed the way toward something more comprehensive: a unified system of monitoring and control. By the time this system is finished (it is about 90% complete), Adobe’s building operating engineers will be able to access any portion of the complex from anywhere they have connectivity, to monitor lighting, temperature, electricity use, natural gas use, and water use, and do this by individual office, floor, and building. Upon completion, Adobe will have spent almost $250,000 on this system, yet with its aid, Adobe has corrected several previously undiscovered problems, saving the company almost $96,000 per year. This is a 30-month payback and a 38% ROI. New technologies enhance Adobe’s ability to do more with less. Technologies reduce labor, increase productivity, give access to information, and improve reporting ability. But the real news is that the majority of the cost savings were realized through applying basic practices and principles of property and facilities management. Adobe and Cushman & Wakefield looked at every component of every system and asked: What can be done to improve efficiency and reduce costs? What was unique at Adobe was not necessarily the quality of the projects implemented, but their quantity. Most properties implement some of these over the course of time; Adobe implemented all of them. have been certified LEED EB at the platinum level and Adobe’s operating expenses are $1.2 million less per year than they would have been had these projects not been undertaken. The numbers have been verified by third-party authorities and speak for themselves: $1.4 million in expenses, $389,000 in rebates, and $1.2 million in annual savings. Energy Star scores are now 98, 100, and 100, for the three buildings, excluding data centers. One other achievement came out of the platinum challenge. Adobe and Cushman & Wakefield went much farther down the road toward creating the intelligent building. In June 2004, Adobe added real-time electric meters to show how electricity use changed as projects were implemented. This helped confirm the savings realized from each measure undertaken. Also in the summer of 2004, Adobe participated in PG&E’s voluntary Demand Response Program, developed to cut electricity demand during critical peak demand periods, thus helping prevent rolling blackouts and keeping spot market energy prices down. When curtailment was called for, Adobe turned off decorative fountains and overhead lighting in perimeter offices. Because two engineers spent 45 min to turn everything off manually, this led to the devel- Lighting As part of Adobe’s 19 lighting projects, overhead lighting also was retrofitted using GE Nexgen Ultra-max T-8 lamps and ballasts. The project cost $65,106 and gave Adobe a rebate of $4,360. Annual savings are $11,315 with a projected payback of 4.5 years. Adobe ROI on this project stands at 19%. In addition to modifying garage fan programming, Adobe retrofitted its garage lighting. This cost $208,827 with a rebate of $40,558. Annual savings are $23,887 with a payback in 1.75 years. This gave Adobe a 60% ROI. 48 Consulting-Specifying Engineer • DECEMBER 2007
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