July 1, 2013: Chilled Water Retrofit Earns Energy Efficiency Awards
Projected Annual Savings of $1.3 Million in Utility Costs
SAN FRANCISCO — An Arup-designed chilled-water system at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) has earned a $757,000 energy efficiency award from PG&E, and a 2013 Higher Education Energy Efficiency and Sustainability Best Practice Award in the HVAC Retrofit category.
The $7.7 million project for the UCSF Medical Center, which Arup designed and completed in January 2013, shifted cooling from old, inefficient absorption chillers, to new high-efficiency electric chillers, and upgraded the chilled water distribution system to both hospitals on the campus. As a result, the project was confirmed by PG&E to save more than 65M kBtu of energy per year, with a projected annual savings of $1.3 million in utility costs, more than $100,000 in maintenance costs, and a simple payback of less than 6 years.