Fleeting scandal aside, the General Services Administration quietly continues to root out government waste and save taxpayer dollars. The GSA announced this week that trials of workstation lighting controls and advanced power strips dramatically reduced electricity use in federal buildings. The agency also announced plans to test an additional dozen energy- and water-saving technologies this year as part of its Green Proving Ground program.
The banality of its name doesn?t hint at the importance of the GSA?s mandate and influence. The GSA is the largest owner of commercial real estate in the United States; it owns and leases 9,600 buildings nationwide. If the GSA were to unleash the full potential of federal procurement across its portfolio, it would expand the market for sustainable technologies.
Regular readers will remember the last time the GSA was featured at this blog. It was April, and GSA was engulfed by blowback from the Las Vegas conference scandal. That post focused on the GSA?s Deep Retrofit Challenge, a partnership with energy service companies under which the GSA aims to achieve ?the maximum energy performance savings possible? by retrofitting 30 federal buildings, totaling nearly 17 million square feet.
The Green Proving Ground complements these efforts by leveraging the GSA?s extensive real estate portfolio to undertake real-world testing of promising energy- and water-saving technologies. Innovations that reduce operating costs and meet the sustainability goals outlined by President Obama for federal agencies (more on this below) are deployed by the GSA. Technologies proven effective in earlier rounds of Green Proving Ground testing, for instance, are being installed as part of building retrofits funded by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).
Here are results from the GSA Green Proving Ground trials released this week:
Tackling plug loads with advanced power strips
Plug loads ? the ubiquitous computers, printers, and copy machines that clutter a modern office ? now account for roughly 25% of the electricity consumed in a typical office building. Working with a team from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), GSA indentified eight buildings in its Mid-Atlantic region in which to test advanced power strips (APS) that constrain plug loads. Planners selected three plug-load reduction strategies: schedule timer control, load-sensing control, and a combination of the two. The APS selected for the trial provides Web-based control, monitoring, and data collection.
The schedule timer control was the most effective strategy tested in the Plug Load Control study (PDF), resulting in an average electricity savings of 48%. Giving users the ability to set the day and time when a circuit is powered on and off reaped particularly large energy savings in the printer room and kitchen, where appliances such as coffee makers and water coolers had been powered 24/7. ?Energy savings and low simple payback argue in favor of deployment of APS with schedule time control throughout GSA?s portfolio,? the GSA found.
The GSA's Green Proving Ground program tests the ability of promising technologies, such as the workstation lighting systems pictured above, to slash energy and water waste in federal buildings. Credit: GSA
Workstation lighting controls
Technology tested under the Occupant Responsive Lighting study (PDF) delivered annual electricity savings ranging from 27% to 63%. This time, the GSA partnered with experts at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) to identify seven sites at five buildings in California to test a package that included a workstation-specific lighting system, dimmable ballasts, occupancy sensors at each luminaire, and controls. The retrofitted systems are centered over each cubicle; separate ballasts dedicated to ambient and task lighting enable individuals to adjust lighting to preferred levels.
Not surprisingly, the test site with the longest working hours ? a call center at the Roybal Federal Building in Los Angeles that is occupied 18 hours a day, seven days a week ? demonstrated the largest energy savings. Simple payback at this site was calculated to be less than seven years. The GSA expects costs for workstation lighting systems to fall as the technology matures and reaches scale. Even so, the GSA says that offices operating 14 hours a day or longer, with utility costs of $0.11/kWh or more, offer ?a strong argument for targeted deployment.?
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