Integrated Whole-Building Zero Net Energy Retrofits for Small Commercial Offices
Develop Cost-Effective Whole Building Integrated Solutions for Small Commercial Offices
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Recipient
Berkeley, CA
Recipient Location
9th
Senate District
15th
Assembly District
$2,000,000
Amount Spent
Completed
Project Status
The Issue
The small commercial office market faces unique barriers to achieving substantial energy reductions. Those barriers are (1) awareness and access to centralized, comprehensive, cost evaluative information about how to achieve energy targets and (2) affordable access to energy reduction services such as engineering and auditing services. Energy efficiency tools and services have comparatively high initial costs per square foot or per kWh saved for small commercial projects as compared with large commercial projects. Because small commercial stakeholders often cannot afford to hire expertise to provide efficiency services, maintenance contractors and product representatives are their available resources for energy reduction guidance. Neither resource may prioritize energy efficiency, however, and both generally are limited to knowledge within their area of specialization, leaving whole building integrated strategies behind. As a result, small commercial buildings typically approach efficiency upgrades through end-of-life equipment replacement or light-touch interventions such as replacing light bulbs or fixtures, often as recommended by their resources.
Project Innovation
For this project, new capabilities were implemented in Commercial Building Energy Saver (CBES) tool to enable ZNE retrofit analysis with advanced technologies. New capabilities include four new features, specifically the rooftop PV system, electric battery, solar shading, the time dependent valuation (TDV) energy metric, and 12 new energy efficiency measures, such as advanced HVAC systems, advanced lighting control, and improved envelope performance.
Project Benefits
This project developed and demonstrated replicable whole building retrofit packages that enable small commercial office spaces to achieve deep energy reductions and ZNE. The whole building packages were tested and optimized under a range of solar exposures and climate conditions using LBNL’s FLEXLAB, then deployed in the field. The project documented energy, thermal and visual comfort performance of energy efficiency measures. The validated energy efficiency measures were packaged into the Commercial Building Energy Saver (CBES) online platform (a publicly available tool) as a ZNE retrofit analysis option accessible to small commercial stakeholders.
Affordability
The project demonstrated energy efficient technology packages achieving > 50-percent annual energy savings for a retrofit site and added functionality to the Commerical Building Energy Saver (CBES) tool to enable deep ZNE retrofits for the small commercial buildings sector. At a 5-percent adoption rate by 2030, the retrofits could result in an estimated savings of $32 million annually in electricity and natural gas costs.
Environmental Sustainability
Assuming 5 percent of small commercial buildings (less than 30,000 square feet) in California adopt the demonstrated retrofit measures (including on-site renewable energy generation) by 2030, greenhouse gas emissions could be reduced by 83,238 metric tons per year.
Key Project Members
Cindy Regnier
Subrecipients
Integral Group, Inc.
San Francisco 2030 District c/o RMW Architects
Match Partners
Northern California test site partner
