The Net Zero Plus Electrical Training Institute in Los Angeles trains about 1,500 electrical apprentices, journeymen, and contractors annually. It is also a demonstration center and living lab for advanced and energy clean energy technologies.
It seems appropriate, then, that this 144,000-sf building is now the country’s largest Net Zero Plus commercial building retrofit.
Net Zero Plus is a comprehensive set of strategies designed by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 11 and the Los Angeles National Electrical Contractors Association, which finance the Institute through a Taft-Hartley trust, according to Brett Moss, the Institute’s Training Director.
Those strategies provide building owners and managers, developers, and architects with integrated energy efficiencies and advanced technologies aimed at changing the way buildings use, produce, store, and monitor energy.
The $15.5 million retrofit, which was completed a few months ago, is expected to reduce the building’s annual total energy usage by 51%, and lower its carbon footprint by 520 metric tons per year.
Moss says that one of the goals of this retrofit is for the building to produce 1.25 times the energy it consumes. In the first months since the retrofit was completed, the building has outperformed expectations.
“I think it’s important to point out that this was a retrofit,” says Moss, who spoke with BD+C last week. “A lot of people are under the assumption that the only way to achieve net zero is ground up.” He adds that the building remained operational during the upgrade.
This building, which dates back to the 1960s, had been expanded a number of times. About a dozen years ago a solar array was added.
The retrofit project started, says Moss, with a building audit that focused on the envelope. A new roof with foam insulation was installed. Stainless-steel mesh shades wall windows, letting in plenty of daylight but also reducing the temperature on the inside of the windows by 20%.
Electrochromatic glass was installed into another wall that’s part of the Institute’s classroom space.
Electrochromatic windows help keep classrooms cool. Image courtesy of NZP ETI.
The building is essentially a warehouse with classrooms. Pre-retrofit, the warehouse door usually stayed open all day, letting hot air into common areas that weren't air conditioned to begin with. The retrofit installed an electric sliding door, and doors to the air-conditioned classrooms stay closed to keep them cool.
Moss says the Institute was an early adopter of LED lighting. “But what we had wasn’t tunable,” and were replaced with fixtures and a Lutron lighting system. And on the mechanical side, a series of package units on the roof was replaced by chillers and a cooling tower.
The building's energy storage system has 300 kilowatt-hours worth of energy stored. As the price of energy storage continues to fall—solar panels go for about 85 cents per watt now, compared to $5 per watt in 2002, when the Institute installed its first PV array—Moss says the Institute envisions this building serving as an emergency operations center that “can operate around the clock” by harvesting energy during the day, drawing down on that storage during the evening, and producing more energy than it uses.
“We should have enough energy in our battery to take the building through any catastrophic event,” says Moss.
Commercial buildings account for nearly 65% of L.A.’s energy consumption, and are responsible for huge amounts of CO2 emissions. The NZP ETI, as the Institute’s building is now known, could also serve as a model for transforming other existing buildings, said Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who was among the more than 500 dignitaries attending the June 6 dedication ceremony for the building.
California requires all commercial structures in the state to be net zero buildings by 2030.
The development team on the Institute's retrofit included contractors O’Bryant Electric and PDE Total Energy Solutions, as well as stok, Western Allied Mechanical, and SimonGlover Architects.
Moss notes that NZP ETI will be on the building tour during Greenbuild, which will be held in Los Angeles this fall.
Glass walls surround the Institute's lobby area. A electric sliding glass door was installed to keep the inside of the building, which is mostly warehouse and common areas that aren't air conditioned, cooler. Image courtesy of NZP ETI.
Related Stories
| Dec 17, 2010
Alaskan village school gets a new home
Ayagina’ar Elitnaurvik, a new K-12 school serving the Lower Kuskikwim School District, is now open in Kongiganak, a remote Alaskan village of less than 400 residents. The 34,000-sf, 12-classroom facility replaces one that was threatened by river erosion.
| Dec 17, 2010
New engineering building goes for net-zero energy
A new $90 million, 250,000-sf classroom and laboratory facility with a 450-seat auditorium for the College of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana/Champaign is aiming for LEED Platinum.
| Dec 17, 2010
Vietnam business center will combine office and residential space
The 300,000-sm VietinBank Business Center in Hanoi, Vietnam, designed by Foster + Partners, will have two commercial towers: the first, a 68-story, 362-meter office tower for the international headquarters of VietinBank; the second, a five-star hotel, spa, and serviced apartments. A seven-story podium with conference facilities, retail space, restaurants, and rooftop garden will connect the two towers. Eco-friendly features include using recycled heat from the center’s power plant to provide hot water, and installing water features and plants to improve indoor air quality. Turner Construction Co. is the general contractor.
| Dec 13, 2010
Energy efficiency No. 1 priority for commercial office tenants
Green building initiatives are a key influencer when tenants decide to sign a commercial real estate lease, according to a survey by GE Capital Real Estate. The survey, which was conducted over the past year and included more than 2,220 office tenants in the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Sweden, the UK, Spain, and Japan, shows that energy efficiency remains the No. 1 priority in most countries. Also ranking near the top: waste reduction programs and indoor air.
| Dec 7, 2010
USGBC: Wood-certification benchmarks fail to pass
The proposed Forest Certification Benchmark to determine when wood-certification groups would have their certification qualify for points in the LEED rating systemdid not pass the USGBC member ballot. As a result, the Certified Wood credit in LEED will remain as it is currently written. To date, only wood certified by the Forest Stewardship Council qualifies for a point in the LEED, while other organizations, such as the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, the Canadian Standards Association, and the American Tree Farm System, are excluded.
| Dec 6, 2010
Honeywell survey
Rising energy costs and a tough economic climate have forced the nation’s school districts to defer facility maintenance and delay construction projects, but they have also encouraged districts to pursue green initiatives, according to Honeywell’s second annual “School Energy and Environment Survey.”
| Dec 2, 2010
Alliance for Sustainable Built Environments adds Kohler's Robert Zimmerman to Board of Directors
Robert Zimmerman, Manager – Engineering, Water Conservation & Sustainability at Kohler Co., in Kohler, Wisconsin, has joined the Board of Directors of the Alliance for Sustainable Built Environments. In his position at Kohler Co., Rob is involved with all aspects of water conservation and sustainability related to plumbing fixtures and faucets.
| Dec 2, 2010
U.S Energy Secretary Chu announces $21 Million to improve energy use in commercial buildings
U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced that 24 projects are receiving a total of $21 million in technical assistance to dramatically reduce the energy used in their commercial buildings. This initiative will connect commercial building owners and operators with multidisciplinary teams including researchers at DOE's National Laboratories and private sector building experts. The teams will design, construct, measure, and test low-energy building plans, and will help accelerate the deployment of cost-effective energy-saving measures in commercial buildings across the United States.
| Nov 29, 2010
Data Centers: Keeping Energy, Security in Check
Power consumption for data centers doubled from 2000 and 2006, and it is anticipated to double again by 2011, making these mission-critical facilities the nation’s largest commercial user of electric power. Major technology companies, notably Hewlett-Packard, Cisco Systems, and International Business Machines, are investing heavily in new data centers. HP, which acquired technology services provider EDS in 2008, announced in June that it would be closing many of its older data centers and would be building new, more highly optimized centers around the world.
