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Haglid Engineering's offices located at 80 Broadway in Hillsdale, Bergen County, New Jersey has received EPA's ENERGY STAR for 2013. The ENERGY STAR signifies that our building performs in the top 25 percent of similar facilities for energy efficiency and meets strict energy efficient performance levels set by the EPA.
80 Broadway is an 8,833 square foot office building with 3,800 square feet of covered, enclosed parking and 5,032 square feet of office space. As part of the company's ongoing energy efficiency program, we have installed lighting upgrades, envelope upgrades, air-to-air energy recovery, and well commissioned timers and controllers, which have greatly reduced the energy consumption throughout the building. The main Energy Recovery Measures (ERMs) are as follows;
1. The direct counter-flow, energy recovery system of BPE, Building Performance Equipment,Inc.(R), is driven off GE self-calibrating CO2 sensors that turn on the ventilation through the energy recovery equipment when the CO2 levels rise much above 700 ppm (parts per million). The BPE units have been tested at over 90% thermal efficiency by ETL (Edison Testing Laboratories). They provide very good thermal comfort, excellent indoor air quality, and help to reduce comfort issues caused by bringing in cold or very warm fresh outdoor air.
2. Another effective energy reduction measure was the replacement of older incandescent lights and fluorescent T12 or T8 with LED lighting installed by Tri-State LED and Energy Integrated Solutions (EIS Group, LLC). We found that LED lighting greatly reduces energy consumption and improves the color rendering index, which is the ability to detect different colors. As an engineering and architectural firm, we work with a lot of graphics, and having a high color rendering index is a big advantage.
3. Light wells are extensively used inside the building. The offices with the light wells require no additional lighting -- the lighting from the four-by-four foot lighting wells produces sufficient illumination, even on cloudy days. This provides us with excellent lighting quality by using natural light at no cost.
4. The envelope of the building has been upgraded with four inches of deck insulation on the roof and the addition of eight inches of fiberglass in the drop ceilings, which contribute to lower energy consumption and better thermal comfort. The windows are generally double paned throughout the building, and as we do renovations we are adding insulation throughout the walls of the building. By using a thermal camera we were able to find areas of low insulation where we needed to install and maintain higher insulation levels throughout the offices.
The above Energy Recovery Measures, including the LED lighting and the BPE energy recovery, can be measured by calculating a payback of less than two years, or an internal rate of return of over 50%. There are many advantages to these ERMs: Besides saving money and energy, we also achieve very good thermal comfort with few cold or hot swings, better indoor air quality, and increased productivity.
When our rooftop equipment was nearing the end of its useful life, we upgraded to ENERGY STAR equipment. If all ventilation air is brought in through a direct counter-flow heat exchanger and the thermal envelope is very good, the mechanical equipment does not have to work very hard. The best way to save energy is to recover it and not burn excess fossil fuels by running the air conditioner more than needed.
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