Touhy Office Plaza is a 5-story all-electric office building located in Des Plaines, IL. The building’s cooling and ventilation has two air handling units (AHU) that are provided with chilled water from a 136-ton water-cooled chiller. Meanwhile, heating is provided by an electric baseboard along the perimeter.
As a ComEd Energy Efficiency Service Provider, Baumann performed retro-commissioning and analyzed a myriad of energy conservation measures.
Most of the spaces still had fluorescent lighting with new LED lights installed in only about a dozen of the tenants’ spaces. There were also issues identified in the HVAC sequence of operation and setpoints which had deviated from the original design intent. As a result, the building’s energy consumption was very high, making it eligible to receive energy-saving consulting services funded by the ComEd Energy Efficiency Program. The following measures have a payback of less than 1 month:
- Scheduling AHU reset
- Scheduling nighttime setback for electric baseboard heaters
- Duct static pressure reset
- LED lighting installation
These measures are predicted to save the building about 334,541 kWh of energy annually. This is the equivalent of reducing the annual emissions by 237 metric tons of CO2.
