Best Practice Guide

Commercial Office Buildings

Adobe Systems Incorporated and Cushman & Wakefield

Arden Realty and next>edge

Cypress Semiconductor

Equity Office Properties

Glenborough Realty Trust

Natural Resources Defense Council

Qualcomm

Swinerton, Inc.

Transwestern Commercial Services


Introduction

Planning an Energy Program

Funding and Approval

Lighting

Building Envelope

Central HVAC System

Distributed Generation

Demand Response

Commissioning

Procurement Policy

Water Use

Education

Energy Efficiency in Telecommuting

Resources and Appendices

Lessons Learned


View the Glossary

Case Study

Equity Office Properties

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Location: One Market Plaza, San Francisco
No. of Buildings: 42-story Spear Tower, 27-story Steuart Tower and a six-story annex and retail space
Type: class-A office complex
Year Built: 1976
Size: 1.4 million square sq. ft.

Location: 201 Mission, San Francisco
Type: Office building
Year Built: 1981
Size: the 30-story tower with more than 489,000 sq. ft.

Website: www.equityoffice.com

Electricity End-Use Consumption in Commercial Office Buildings by ActivityView Details.

Equity Office Properties Trust (NYSE:EOP), operating through its various subsidiaries and affiliates, is the nation's largest publicly held office building owner and manager with a total office portfolio of 678 buildings comprising 122.7 million square feet in 18 states and the District of Columbia. Equity Office has an ownership presence in 27 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) and in 118 submarkets, enabling it to provide a wide range of office solutions for local, regional and national customers.

Deregulation of major energy markets like California opened the door for distributed generation (DG) on commercial properties. Although expensive to install, DG generates electricity more efficiently and at a lower financial and environmental cost than power from the traditional grid. A cogeneration DG system, preferred by Equity Office, also produces thermal energy (hot water and steam) as a byproduct, which in turn is used by absorption chillers to cool and heat a building.

Responding to this opportunity, Equity Office created a subsidiary, On-Site Energy Providers (OSEP), LLC, and is committed to installing cogeneration systems across its property portfolio. So far, 19 have been completed nationwide, 15 of which are in California. These cogeneration systems are designed to generate about 20 to 25 percent of a building's energy requirements, resulting in a lower load profile. By using less utility energy during peak hours, Equity Office is able to purchase electricity at cheaper rates.

Frank Frankini, Equity Office's senior vice president of engineering and energy operations wrote in an article for Real Estate Southern California, "As the price of electric power, steam and other types of energy continues to rise, and increased demand puts a strain on California's utility grid (i.e. the cause of potential blackouts), landlords are responding by deploying distributed generation systems to generate energy at higher efficiencies than traditional utility systems." Frankini continues, "The key operational benefits of (DG) systems include the delivery of improved power reliability, cleaner electric power, and below market energy rates, in an environmentally friendly manner."

One Market Plaza in San Francisco was one of the first projects undertaken by Equity Office. The 1.5 MW cogeneration system is one of the largest ever to be interconnected to a network distribution grid in the United States. The system consists of three 500 kW generators with waste heat recovery that produce 4000 lbs. of steam per hour. Until this project, PG&E had not permitted any onsite generator to run parallel within the downtown area due to potential risks to the grid. OSEP proved to PG&E that its control system could operate reliably and safely, and were given the green light.

Because San Francisco buildings do not have high heating and cooling loads like other Californian cities, the economics of this system needed to be proven. Equity Office secured a grant from the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) to cover 30 percent of the capital costs. Under this agreement, Equity Office guaranteed that the system would run at 62 percent efficiency -- by comparison, central power efficiency can be as low as 27 percent.

Since the original install, Equity Office has upgraded the system to allow tenants to use it for backup power in the event of a utility power failure.

Based on the success of its 1.5 MW cogeneration project at One Market Plaza, Equity Office installed another DG system at its nearby property 201 Mission in San Francisco. Equity Office contracted Northern Power System to design, engineer and build a turnkey, grid-connected on-site combined heat and power (CHP) system.

The 750 kW system features two 375 kW natural gas-fired engine generator sets. Waste heat (thermal energy) from electricity generation is used to produce hot water for the building's heating system. Cogeneration supplies about 40 percent of the building's electricity and 90 percent of its annual steam demand. Because of the heat recovery, the cogeneration system's overall fuel efficiency is about 80 percent. This dramatically increases fuel efficiency while reducing greenhouse gas emissions by up to 40 percent.

"The Development of Northern's CHP system reduces the building's draw on the city's overburdened power supply and further exemplifies Equity Office's commitment to making our office buildings energy efficient and environmentally friendly," Frankini added.

Mark Geisreiter, senior vice president of Equity Office's San Francisco region, said, "Extending the benefits of this system to 201 Mission adds value to our property, our customers and to the city. Because this system is not only a viable solution to energy shortages, but also a cost-saving tactic and an environmentally beneficial supplement or alternative to grid power, we're seeing more interest from existing and prospective customers in utilizing the cogeneration systems already in place at One Market. We believe this will transfer into additional interest at 201 Mission."

The project qualified for the CPUC Self-Generation Incentive Rebate, administed through PG&E, which provided about 30 percent of the capital costs. Payback on Equity Office's investment should take 5-6 years.