After all this talk about how great energy audits and retro-commissioning is, let’s take a look at a case study which shows the power of these tools in action. We worked on a historic 555,000 sf museum, originally built in 1897. After an energy audit and retro-commissioning study, the facility will save approximately $520,000 in annual energy savings with a simple payback of a little over 2 years.

Major energy conservation measures (ECMs) that were found in the energy auditing process include: retrofitting gallery light fixtures from incandescent and halogen to CFL/LED lamps, upgrading the old pneumatic controls to direct digital controls (DDC) for AHUs and implementing several control strategy upgrades, such as gallery VFD speed optimization, economizer controls and demand control ventilation.

Through the retro-commissioning process, HEA determined several key retro-commissioning measures (RCMs). A selection of issues found include: non-functioning hand-off-auto switches, inactive BMS points, improperly wired supply and…