ENERGY STAR Labeled Building Profile

Public Service Company Of Colorado
550 15th St.
Denver, CO 80202
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The Technical Services Building is a Class A office building in downtown Denver with 321,000 GSF of office space. The property was built in 1962 and is owned by Public Service Company of Colorado. Facility operations is by Tolin Mechanical Systems Co.  The lobby opens onto 15th Street directly across from the Pavilions shopping and entertainment complex in the heart of downtown Denver.  Tenants enjoy excellent thermal comfort and indoor air quality with design specific illumination throughout the building.

In 1995, Public Service Company of Colorado completed a major renovation of the building. The comprehensive, whole building approach to upgrading the mechanical and electrical systems included:

• A complete lighting retrofit with new high efficiency fixtures and T8 technology that reduced the electric demand by 480 kW. Attention to detail was given to the lighting design, particularly where the tenants require less overhead illumination and more task lighting.  In some areas, the average lighting level at desk top is less than 30 foot candles, which results in less glare on computer screens and more visual comfort for the occupants.
  
• HVAC Tune-ups harvested the cascading effect of more efficient lighting by optimizing the operation of the fan systems and the chilled water system to reduce electric demand by an additional 120 kW. When the outside temperature is below 70°F, the building uses an outside air economizer cycle to reduce load on the cooling coils and, at night, when the lights are off, the building uses a pre-purge cycle to take advantage of Denver's cool summer nights. A new energy management system was installed to implement these energy efficiency strategies.
  
• Other Load reductions included new low-e, double pane windows with new frames and ENERGY STAR products such as computers and copy machines.
  
• Fan and pump modifications included new controllable pitch vane-axial fans and more efficient pumps with variable speed devices, which are modulated to reduce fan and pump power demand, as much as possible. These fans and pumps were right-sized to take advantage of the reduced load due to the lighting and other load reductions. This resulted in 12pter fans and pumps, that were not only more efficient, but cost less too.
  
• A new high efficiency R-123 chiller replaced a steam driven absorption chiller and the existing electric chiller was retrofitted from R-11 to R-123. Again, right-sizing to take advantage of the cascading reductions in load due to lighting, other load reductions and more efficient fans and pumps, resulted in more efficiency, at a lower cost.
  
• The total reduction in kWh was 3.2 million kWh per year and the reduction in district steam was 7,000 klbs. per year. All this added up to annual savings that generated increased asset value for Public Service Company of Colorado. Ongoing energy efficiency focus and training is supported at the property management level and at the facility management level.  Particularly, the energy management system is used at a high level of understanding by the operating engineers.  When special expertise is needed, it is provided by regional technical support.

"It was a great retrofit to be involved with," said Chief Engineer Eric Kreiling of Tolin Mechanical Systems Company. "It's not often that you have the opportunity to learn to operate a system that is totally upgraded, in a 1960's building. Fine tuning and re-evaluating EMS programming against actual occupancy schedules, probably produced some of the better-than-expected results."

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The narrative information in this profile has been provided by Public Service Company Of Colorado or a representative of this facility.

* Building owners and managers may periodically change. The owner/manager displayed reflects information known at the time the most recent label was earned.