HARTFORD, CONN.—The Connecticut Convention Center has recently taken steps in the green direction with the completion of two major projects that will improve the facility’s energy efficiency.
Beginning last summer, the Center entrusted the help of Strategic Building Solutions (SBS) to review the energy usage for chilled water, hot water, and steam throughout the facility. For four months, SBS made adjustments to the Center’s computers, pump controls, motor controls, and Variable Frequency Drives (VFDs). Within a month of SBS completing these adjustments, the Convention Center saw a savings in chilled water and hot water usage. To this day, those savings have continued.
“With the assistance of SBS, we took our existing heating and cooling system, which services our 540,000 square foot facility, and made it operate more efficiently and effectively resulting in cost savings and lower energy usage,” explains Michael Costelli, General Manager for the Connecticut Convention Center.
In addition, the Connecticut Convention Center is near completion of a major interior and exterior lighting upgrade as well. Tri-State LED, a division of Revolution Lighting Technologies, is working with the Center to complete the largest LED lighting retrofit the State has seen to date. The project is being performed in cooperation with the “Lead by Example Program” adopted by Governor Dannel Malloy and Northeast Utilities. Inside the Convention Center, nearly 3,500 fluorescent fixtures and over 900 high wattage metal halide lamps are either being retrofitted or replaced. On the outside of the facility, 500 metal halide and high pressure sodium lamps are being retrofitted or replaced.
“The project will remove an unprecedented two megawatts off the grid equating to more than a 70 percent reduction in lighting energy,” said Ron Young President, Tri-State LED. “The Convention Center will see a complete return on investment in less than three years as well as a reduction in its carbon footprint of over 2,621,000 pounds annually.”
Go to the Connecticut Convention Center.
