by Rebecca Walker — April 17, 2009—Most commercial buildings built before 2000 have pneumatic thermostats that require manual adjustment. Californias Santa Clara County, which operates 11 million square feet of existing facilities, with an annual energy cost of $15 million, found a way to lower costs with wireless programmable pneumatic thermostats made by Cypress Envirosystems.
The Silicon Valley start-up company is a subsidiary of Cypress Semiconductor Corporation.
“The wireless thermostat installation took only eight days and was one of the easiest, fast and most cost effective energy efficiency improvements we have ever made in our buildings,” said Jeff Draper, Manager of Building Operations. “We installed 350 wireless thermostats for a total project cost of $175,000.”
The Cypress Envirosystems WPT product allows the County to control and remotely track HVAC usage, which in turn allows the County to enroll two additional buildings into the PG&E Demand Response Program.
This program requires participating entities to reduce energy use during peak periods such as on hot summer days, and the County has received more than $300,000 in participation incentive rebates from PG&E for enrolling in the Demand Response Program, implementing the wireless programmable thermostats and other improvements.
“The County hit a triple with this program,” said Vice President of the Board of Supervisors Ken Yeager. “Not only will it help reduce the amount of greenhouse gases the County emits, it also pumps money into the local economy while reducing overall operating costs. It is a win-win-win situation.”
Cypress Envirosystems offers a pneumatic wireless thermostat that can easily replace a conventional non-communicating pneumatic device. The Cypress solution can be retrofitted to replace an existing conventional, pneumatic thermostat in about 15 minutes, creating minimal disruption to the building occupants. Conventional direct digital control thermostats typically cost around $2,000 to $3,000 per thermostat and installation requires building tenants to vacate the facility while electrical work is done. Installation of a conventional direct digital control system would have cost the County over $880,000 and required at least six months to install, according to the company.
For more information, see the Web site.
