Eliminating CFCs and improving efficiency at the Bank of America

Book · Thu Jun 01 04:00:00 EDT 1995

OSTI ID:55566

Howe, B

San Francisco`s Bank of America building is a 1.5-million-square-foot landmark with an annual electric load of over 30 million kWh. The building`s co-owner and property manager, The Shorenstein Company, has phased out CFCs, reduced the size of its chillers by 30 percent, and improved central plant efficiency by over 32 percent. Central chiller plant upgrades, lighting retrofits, and variable-frequency motor drives have reduced overall building electricity consumption by about 10 percent. In addition to these savings, a real-time pricing strategy has helped Shorenstein to bring down the overall cost of electric power, reducing the building`s 1994 electric bill by nearly $300,000. The experiences at Bank of America demonstrate the opportunity available for many centrally cooled facilities to eliminate CFC refrigerants, reduce plant size, and dramatically improve overall system efficiency. Even without the reduction in cooling load afforded by energy efficient lighting upgrades, many central plants are sufficiently oversized from the onset that retrofitting with smaller and less expensive chillers becomes practical. The Bank of America also demonstrates the benefit of retrofitting with chillers of different sizes which allows staging of chiller capacity to efficiently meet varying cooling loads.

• OSTI ID: 55566
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATION
54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES
AIR CONDITIONERS
AIR CONDITIONING
CALIFORNIA
CHLOROFLUOROCARBONS
COMMERCIAL BUILDINGS
ELECTRIC MOTORS
ELECTRIC POWER
ENERGY CONSERVATION
ENERGY CONSUMPTION
ENERGY EFFICIENCY
LIGHTING SYSTEMS
MATERIAL SUBSTITUTION
RETROFITTING
SIZING