Rudin Management Feasibility Study
One Battery: 866,956 SF
Project Background:
Rudin Management, owner and property manager of a large portfolio of Class A commercial office buildings in New York City, requested an in-depth feasibility study of the chilled water plants in two of their facilities. Steven Winter Associates had previously selected 641 Lexington Avenue and One Battery Park Plaza as candidates for chiller plant upgrades based on the facilities’ excessive steam consumption during mild weather. Both facilities used steam turbine chillers for cooling and struggled to efficiently meet low-load cooling requirements. Rudin sought an intelligent, data-driven solution.
Project Services:
Steven Winter Associates, Inc. completed a feasibility study, and Incentive Application Assistance for the project.
Primary Energy Conservation Measures:
Combining building systems knowledge with data analysis expertise, SWA identified and evaluated two competing solutions for Rudin’s chilled water plants: (1) enhancing control of the existing steam turbine chillers, and (2) installing electric chillers or parallel electric drivelines to operate during low-load conditions.
Using a year’s worth of actual trend data collected from the building management software aligned with Con Edison steam interval data, SWA modeled each facility’s entire chilled water system performance and resulting steam consumption under various part load conditions. SWA also performed a 25-year life cycle cost analysis for each proposed measure.
This investigation revealed that enhancing control of the existing steam chillers was the best option for both buildings, with a savings-to-investment ratio of 1.72 at 641 Lexington Avenue and 5.74 at One Battery Park Plaza. These enhanced controls will save a combined $80,558 in utility costs annually. This project qualified for Con Edison incentives for the implementation, installation and maintenance agreement.