Cypress Envirosystems' Energy Savings Retrofit of County of Santa Clara Buildings Enables Continuous Commissioning with Payback in Less than a Year

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 wireless thermostat installation took only eight days and was one of the easiest, fastest and most cost effective energy efficiency improvements we have ever made in our buildings,” said Jeff Draper, Manager of Building Operations for the County. “We installed 350 wireless thermostats for a total project cost of $175,000.”

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% 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-feet, for 300,000 square-feet). The high cost was in part due to the lack of diagnostics and difficulties in troubleshooting and repairing pneumatic systems. 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% reduction.

“We are absolutely delighted to see a payback period of less than one year for Santa Clara County,” said Harry Sim, CEO of Cypress Envirosystems. ”In these days of fiscal constraints, most customers only undertake projects that are cost effective and deliver quick payback. The County has really taken full advantage of our technology to obtain a combination of energy savings, maintenance savings, and demand response incentives.”