Strategic Energy Management Cuts Building Energy Use Nearly in Half
Published on January 10, 2025
Walk through downtown Denver’s Central Business District, and you see long blocks of skyscrapers that can all look the same. But that’s not what Patrick Finé, Director at the commercial real estate company Cushman & Wakefield, sees.
With more than 40 years of experience managing high rise buildings in Denver, Finé knows many of these tall office buildings.
“I view my job as solving problems. And everything that I look at includes issues that there is a resolution to – each takes varying degrees of time and investment to solve,” said Finé.
Each Denver high rise has a unique constellation of factors that include elements like deferred maintenance, investor opinions, and level of debt. Few buildings in downtown Denver are debt-free, which means less capital is available for building efficiency upgrades.
When Finé was asked to manage 555 17th Street, he knew he found a unique set of problems that he’d enjoy solving. Because the 1978 high rise with 39 floors has no debt, this made the typical Strategic Energy Management (SEM) conversations around things like LEDs, pneumatic control conversion to DDC technology, and building systems automation less challenging.
“There are very few buildings that do not have debt service,” said Finé. “When you have a debt-free building, it gives you more freedom in how you consider the options available and what recommendations you make to the owner of the property for system upgrades.
Compared to a 2014 baseline, 555 17th Street has seen a nearly 50% drop in energy consumption. Starting from a 2019 Energy Use Intensity (EUI) baseline of 63, the building today in 2024 sits at 41.8—well below its 2030 Energize Denver target of 50.3.
Enacted in 2022, the Energize Denver Building Performance Policy seeks to achieve a 30% reduction in energy use of covered existing buildings by 2030.
What follows is a summary of key improvements made to the building.
LEDs
Starting January 1, 2025, Colorado will ban the sale of florescent lighting. Some buildings are addressing the issue by simply replacing florescent lamps with retrofit LEDs, reports Finé. But he knows that installing a new LED fixture can be more energy efficient.
“If all you're doing is replacing the bulbs with an LED replacement, then that ballast is still energized and still consuming power,” he said
Finé made tenant improvement construction updates that include LED fixtures that provide occupancy sensing and light level management systems. In the building’s parking garage, Finé had LED fixtures installed that incorporate occupancy sensors and light harvesting capabilities. If those light fixtures do not sense movement, then they automatically reduce the light levels to 30% of the full light levels.
Pneumatic Controller Replacement and Building Automation
Thus far, the majority of 555 17th Street’s major mechanical equipment has been converted from pneumatic—or air operated—to Direct Digital Control (DDC) and approximately 65% of the building’s tenant spaces have been converted from pneumatic to DDC controls. A number of the floors that haven’t yet been converted are prewired for future conversion.
“We found the DDC conversions have been very helpful in allowing us to achieve our citywide goals and continue to reduce our cost of operations,” said Finé.
Finé estimates that the price tag of this improvement was significant: between $2.50 and $3.00 per square foot. But the benefits pay dividends that continue to be realized.
“You get the benefit of enhanced control, greater tenant comfort, and the building engineers can more quickly respond to tenant complaints,” he said.
And putting his engineers and staff in a place where they can be proactive compared to reactive is priceless.
Building Cooling and Automation
Like many high rises, 555 17th Street utilizes refrigeration equipment called chillers to produce the cold water that is then in turn used to provide cool air to the tenants of the building.
In 2022, due to an agreement signed between the original building owners and Xcel Energy, Finé worked with Xcel Energy to decommission and replace the original building chillers with new more efficient equipment. That work was performed in the building’s 39th floor mechanical equipment space which required a roof-mounted crane to lift the new multi-ton equipment into the building.
Along with the new cooling system, Finé installed a $40,000 optimization software package to make operations more efficient.
So far, he’s finding the software package is paying off. With the software optimization system controlling the new, more efficient mechanical equipment the new system is nearly three times more efficient than the old one.
“We continue to shave costs just through our ongoing replacement of system devices as they fail, or as they reach their useful end of life and have to be replaced,” said Finé.
Next Up: Installing Heat Pump Hot Water Heaters
Up next in the modernization of 555 17th Street is a $7.6 million project to convert a new ground floor fitness center and bike barn and the conversion of another floor into multiple meeting spaces as well as fun and funky hangout spaces replete with windows that will open to the outside for a more al fresco work environment. A portion of that work includes the installation of electric heat pump hot water heaters that both comply with the building code and help to achieve the building goal of increased systems electrification.
In addition, modernization plans include updating the building’s 18 elevators at a cost of nearly $10 million. The new elevator systems are expected to provide greater efficiency in how service is delivered to the tenants of the building.
While all the projects will be important for retaining and attracting new tenants, Finé can’t help but to turn his attention back to the building’s EUI score. While it more-than-safely meets the 2030 Energize Denver requirements, Finé would like to continue his quest for efficiency and get the building’s score below 40.
“It's part of that ongoing commissioning, monitoring based commissioning, and retro-commissioning that should be a part of the language of everybody that owns commercial real estate,” said Finé. “You can't just open a building and expect it to operate this efficiently over time.’ You have to constantly make sure every building system is doing what it's designed to do.”