by Rebecca Walker — February 1, 2010—Cypress Envirosystems, a subsidiary of Cypress Semiconductor Corp. announced that the County of Santa Clara, in California, has documented significant savings in energy consumption, continuous commissioning and maintenance effort as a result of a March 2009 HVAC retrofit.
The County used Cypress Envirosystems’ innovative Wireless Pneumatic Thermostat to retrofit pneumatic HVAC systems to provide the benefits of modern Direct Digital Control (DDC) systems, but at a fraction of the cost and with virtually no disruption to building occupants. The project achieved payback on investment in approximately 11 months. The fast payback was due in part to the project qualifying for the local PG&E utility’s Auto Demand Response Program, but the County estimates the payback period would have been only 16 months without the PG&E incentives.
Most commercial buildings ten years or older have pneumatic thermostats that require manual adjustment, meaning that someone has to manually lower and raise the thermostat to adjust the temperature. Retrofits using conventional DDC technology are extremely costly and often infeasible due to exposure to asbestos and other disruptions to tenants, whereas a Wireless Pneumatic Thermostat can be installed in under 20 minutes without opening up walls or ceilings.
The County realized energy savings via a combination of improved temperature setpoint management and continuous commission activities, which included the identification and repair of mechanical deficiencies. Annual savings of $42,000, or 7 percent of the total building electrical consumption, was quantified by comparison to actual electrical meter readings from the same period in the prior year.
The County also realized a significant savings in ongoing maintenance effort, aided by diagnostic reports provided by Cypress Envirosystems. Over the prior year, a service contractor charged approximately $25,000 per month for mechanical maintenance (about 50 cents per square foot, for 300,000 square feet). After the retrofit, the data and diagnostics provided by the Wireless Pneumatic Thermostat system enabled the maintenance effort to be much more targeted and streamlined, and reduced the monthly cost to $12,000. Annualized savings for the County is approximately $156,000, or a 52 percent reduction.
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