Evaluation results for an energy-efficient office new construction project

As part of an energy efficiency research and development project, a major northern California utility in conjunction with the California State Automobile Association (CSAA) designed, built and analyzed the most energy efficient office building in California. The 1,419 m{sup 2} building is located in Antioch, California and has been occupied since June 1994. Before the utility invited CSAA to participate in the research project, the district office was to be built as specified by CSAA's corporate construction guidelines, which would have minimally satisfied California's Title-24 energy standards. However, by applying an integrated design concept, the design team reduced the building's projected energy consumption by 70% at a cost competitive with electric and gas utility supply costs. The savings are achieved with variable-aperture daylighting; dual-fan, dual-duct HVAC; high performance glazing; energy efficient computers; and several other measures. Based upon the data collected from the end-use metering system installed by the utility, the actual energy savings are about 64%, closely matching the DOE-2 modeled energy savings projections.