Laboratory Retrofit Energy Assessment Process: A Case Study and a Process Guide
Rod Mahdavi, P.E., LEED AP®, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
The U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) is working to evaluate energy efficiency opportunities in federal laboratories. As part of this process, energy assessments of laboratory facilities will be conducted under the Save Energy Now program. These assessments are designed to help laboratory professionals identify energy-saving measures that are most likely to yield the greatest energy savings. The assessments are not intended to be a complete energy audit, but rather the process is meant to educate laboratory staff and managers on an approach that can be used to identify potential energy saving opportunities that can be further investigated.
The objective is to standardize and streamline the laboratory assessment process to reduce cost and assure quality and consistency. DOE is continuing to develop tools to support the assessment process, with the long-term goal of having a comprehensive tool suite to enable a fully standardized assessment process. While the details will be discussed in the presentation, the steps are summarized as the following:
- Hold kickoff conference call to review goals, scope, information, and documents.
- Use Labs21 Benchmarking Tool for preliminary energy use ranking.
- Use Labs21 Laboratory Energy Efficiency Profiler (LEEP) Tool for identification of probable action items, retrofit relevance, and scale of impact.
- Compile existing information from drawings, trend logs, etc.
- Arrange onsite meeting with all stakeholders including site tour and overview of systems and equipment.
- Conduct site visit with stakeholders. Review and document efficiency actions to be studied.
- Estimate savings for potential retrofit projects.
- Compile preliminary assessment report and present to site stakeholders.
Rod Mahdavi is a program manager in the Environmental Energy Technology Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He has worked extensively in the design of high-tech facilities and data centers, semiconductor facilities, clean rooms, laboratories, and health care buildings. Recently, he has been performing energy use assessment in many data centers and laboratory environments and providing the stakeholders with energy efficiency measures. Mr. Mahdavi has been a facility engineer for a pharmaceutical company and has executed projects for saving energy in the laboratories and vivaria. He is a LEED AP, holds a master's degree in mechanical engineering, and is a licensed professional engineer in California, Arizona, and New Mexico.