Challenge
Lillibridge Healthcare Services, a full-service healthcare real estate company, has a corporate objective to save $1 million in energy costs in 2016. One of the real estate owner’s medical office buildings in South Carolina was performing particularly low due to inadequate equipment and maintenance. The building also had an abnormally low ENERGY STAR® score. CSUSA was brought in to assess the problem and implement necessary changes. CSUSA also provided Lillibridge with a free trial to the Energy Smart Dashboard - a value-added benchmarking and reporting service—to track the building’s performance and show return on investment.
Solution
Before partnering with ColonialWebb, Lillibridge was forced to run the building’s air conditioning system nearly 24 hours a day - just to keep tenants comfortable. After an in-depth diagnosis of the building’s control system, ColonialWebb identified that the problem was an air conditioning compressor not operating properly. With this mechanical item resolved, ColonialWebb was able to reschedule the building’s 24-hour occupancy schedule with a new schedule that better reflected the true occupancy hours. These two issues largely attributed to the building’s excessive energy consumption and low ENERGY STAR score. Following is a summary of the low-cost/no cost solutions provided:
- Schedule change (to reflect the true occupancy hours of the space )
- Proper maintenance (primarily cleaning and bringing equipment up to like factory new conditions)
- Monitor building performance and track ENERGY STAR score
- improvement with Energy Smart Dashboard reporting
A Closer Look
Since working with ColonialWebb, Lillibridge’s energy costs have been reduced by 16% in only eight months (January-August 2015). This more than pays for the Maintenance plan. And, the property’s ENERGY STAR score has gone from 14 to a score of 37, while building comfort and satisfaction has also increased.
ColonialWebb continues to monitor this building’s progress and track their ENERGY STAR score to find more efficiency opportunities that will continue to help Lillibridge reduce energy costs and further raise their ENERGY STAR score.