At GBA, we love helping clients set up Energy Management Systems. A comprehensive tool is the DOE 50001 Ready Navigator (https://navigator.lbl.gov/). It breaks the ISO 50001 Energy Management standard down into 25 tasks. At a minimum, energy management can be about...
Since its inception in 1995, GBA's Hospital Energy and Water Benchmarking Survey has helped hospitals benchmark their energy and cost performance against other similar facilities, in an anonymous format. Participants are provided with graphical and numerical...
Do your critical-use buildings have their transfer switch settings optimized? Critical-use buildings—such as hospitals, data centers, prisons, laboratories, and buildings that house industrial processes—utilize generators for backup power. Transfer switches are a...
GBA is occasionally asked about the potential impact of upcoming phase-downs of some common HFC refrigerants, including R410A. In 1988, the U.S. Senate unanimously ratified the Montreal Protocol, which led to a phase out of CFC refrigerants responsible for damage to...
Electrical designers must be conscious of environmental factors that will impact electrical equipment, including temperature, wind, snow, and so on. This is especially critical for photovoltaic (PV) installations where a large portion of the system will be subjected...
By Laurence Steiner, PE, LEED APThanks to efforts by the industry, a lot of progress has been made in improving energy efficiency in data centers. Completing a project last year, I was struck by the impact of the changes being made through improved HVAC design and...
Design-build retro-commissioning (DBRCx) is a new approach Grumman|Butkus Associates (GBA) has developed to assist a large for-profit healthcare organization in implementing a retro-commissioning (RCx) program across multiple hospitals nationwide. The process is...
PACE provides low-cost financing for energy efficiency and renewable energy projects.The Cook County Commercial Property Assessed Clean Energy (CPACE) Program was launched in February, providing new funding for a variety of commercial building improvements. It joined...
Thanks to industry leaders and groups like ASHRAE, best practice in data center HVAC has come a long way. Unfortunately, many older data centers and telecom facilities are cooled with constant-speed computer room air conditioning (CRAC) units with simple controls.The...