POWER June 2020 - 32

COMMERCIAL & INDUSTRIAL GENERATION AWARD
Company's Mission-
A Clean Energy Building,
and Living Laboratory
Courtesy: Delta Electronics (Americas)
Embracing sustainability is more than a slogan for Delta Electronics (Americas); it's
defined by the company's headquarters building. The site incorporates Delta's own
technologies to promote energy efficiency and the production of clean power.
Darrell Proctor
M
any companies have a mission
statement, words designed to
define what the company values,
how it operates, and the way it will
serve its customers and community. For
Delta Electronics (Americas), the U.S.based
arm of Taiwan's Delta Electronics,
a nearly 50-year-old global provider
of power and thermal management solutions,
the mission statement is more
than a slogan. It's woven into the fabric
of the company's Americas headquarters
building in Fremont, California.
The 178,000-square-foot LEED Platinum
building incorporates Delta's own
energy-efficient solutions to achieve
sustainability. (LEED, which stands for
Leadership in Energy and Environmental
Design, is an internationally recognized
green building certification program.) The
innovations are many: a solar photovoltaic
(PV) system with Delta's high-efficiency
solar inverters, along with a ground
source heat pump and geothermal system
that takes advantage of Fremont's
natural warm springs, and supports a
bi-directional radiant heating and cooling
system, with active chilled beams.
The $68 million building also utilizes
Delta's variable frequency drives, which
enable speed control of industrial motors
in fans, pumps, and other equipment,
promoting energy efficiency. The campus
also includes 19 of Delta's alternating
current electric vehicle (EV) chargers,
and there's a 140,000-gallon rainwater
harvesting tank, from which water is
taken to irrigate the landscape.
" Our mission statement is: 'To provide
32
innovative,
clean and energy-efficient
solutions for a better tomorrow.' That
statement says a lot, " Ruth Chao, corporate
affairs manager for Delta Electronics
(Americas), told POWER. " That's an
English translation of the original mission
statement in Chinese-'protect the environment,
save energy, love the Earth.'
It's telling the company that sustainability
matters, that all of these things are
embedded in our DNA. It all comes from
[company founder] Bruce Cheng. "
Chao noted that Cheng, who founded
Delta in Taipei, Taiwan, in 1971, valued a
focus on environmental issues and sustainable
business practices long before
it became fashionable, with the company
dedicated to manufacturing energyefficient
products.
" [Cheng] started looking into all these
various systems that buildings can incorporate, "
Chao said, " either into our own
building, or in schools or other buildings
... like incorporating geothermal. I am
very, very glad that we were able to install
that system. " And it's quite the system
(Figure 1), circulating 12,000 gallons
of water through 92 miles of pipes.
Delta's building has already been honored
with several awards for its innovative
and energy-saving design. It can now
add one more to the list: POWER's Commercial
& Industrial Generation award.
Location Key to Building's Design
Delta's Americas headquarters building
was designed by J.J. Pan & Associates,
a Taiwan-based group, in collaboration
with San Francisco-based Korth Sungeri
Hagey (KSH) Architects. Nearby Palo
www.powermag.com
Alto-based Vance Brown Builders served
as the general contractor.
The building's Fremont location, adjacent
to natural wetlands, helped with
the design of the innovative geothermal
heating and cooling system that
reduces the campus' heating, ventilation,
and air conditioning (HVAC) energy
consumption by 60% compared to traditional
systems. The building's 616-kW
rooftop PV system currently powers
about 70% of the entire facility's annual
energy consumption.
A recently installed 506-kW bi-facial
carport PV system, combined with
Delta's own inverters and energy storage
systems, has the campus on pace
to achieve net-zero energy consumption
in the near future. The building, which
can house as many as 500 employees,
includes office space, test laboratories,
a data center, product showroom, and a
40,000-square-foot warehouse.
" We had some challenges trying to
put this system together. I was involved
with the project, starting in 2010, when
we were wanting to build a 'green'
building, and I had never dealt with
construction, " said Chao, who served
as Delta's internal project coordinator.
" We were able to put together this
great team of contractors and consultants.
Everything was thought about at
the design stage, what the goals were
and how to achieve them. "
Construction began in September
2013, and Delta employees began moving
in two years later.
" We had to find the right team that
shared our vision, our goals, and could
POWER|June 2020
http://www.powermag.com
POWER June 2020

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